The Amazon fair pricing policy is the rule Amazon uses to pull the Featured Offer, remove an offer or restrict an account when a price, a shipping fee or a reference price harms customer trust. On the US store, Amazon names four practices, setting a reference price that misleads customers, setting a price significantly higher than recent prices offered on or off Amazon, charging more per unit for a multi-unit offer than for a single unit, and setting an excessive shipping fee. Amazon states it can remove the Featured Offer, remove the offer, suspend the ship option, or in serious or repeated cases suspend or terminate selling privileges. Most warnings we review trace to a repricer rule that raised prices during a stockout, a low item price paired with a high shipping charge, or a List Price that does not reflect real recent sales. The fix is to correct the price, prove where it came from, and show the control that stops it happening again. A first-time flag on one ASIN is usually an offer-level problem you can clear from Pricing Health in a day. A repeat pattern across SKUs is what moves Amazon toward the account.

What the Amazon Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy Covers

Amazon’s policy starts with a statement of responsibility, that sellers are responsible for setting their own prices on Amazon stores. Amazon then explains that it regularly monitors the prices of items on its stores, including shipping costs, and compares them with other prices available to its customers. The Amazon fair pricing policy is the rule Amazon applies when that comparison shows a problem.

The four practices Amazon names

On the US store, Amazon lists pricing practices that harm customer trust, and states the list is not exhaustive.

A misleading reference price. Setting a reference price on a product or service that misleads customers.
A price significantly above recent prices. Setting a price significantly higher than recent prices offered on or off Amazon.
Inverted multi-unit pricing. A pack whose per-unit cost is higher than the single unit sold on its own. Amazon’s German policy gives the example of a 10-pack of shampoo at EUR 50, which is EUR 5 per unit, against a 5-pack at EUR 10, which is EUR 2 per unit.
An excessive shipping fee. Amazon considers current public carrier rates, reasonable handling charges and buyer perception when deciding whether a shipping price violates the policy.

Notice what the policy does not say. It does not set a percentage threshold, and it does not define “recent.” Amazon judges each case against the prices it observes. In every case we work, the diagnostic question is which rule or person set the flagged price, and when. An unexplained spike reads as intent. A documented repricer error, already corrected, reads as a gap that has been closed.

What Amazon can do

The US policy lists four actions, in rising order of severity, which are to remove the Featured Offer, remove the offer, suspend the ship option, or in serious or repeated cases suspend or terminate selling privileges. The first three act on a single offer. The last acts on the account. That is a documented escalation from offer level to account level, and it is the reason a pricing warning deserves attention even when only one ASIN is affected.

First-time flag vs repeat or permanent action

A first-time Amazon fair pricing policy violation almost always lands at offer level. The Featured Offer goes, or the listing is deactivated, and the remedy is a corrected price. The US and UK policies both reserve suspension or termination for “serious or repeated cases.” The German policy is narrower in wording and ties account suspension to “repeated cases.” In practice, a repeat pattern looks like the same repricer rule tripping on several SKUs over a few weeks, or a List Price that keeps getting re-entered after Amazon ignores it.

Repeat cases change what Amazon expects in the response. A single corrected price no longer answers the question. The reviewer wants to see why the earlier correction did not hold and what control now prevents the next one. A permanent outcome follows when the account keeps producing the same pricing violation after warnings, which is why the change log described further down matters more on the second flag than on the first. Our guide to pricing violations that escalate to suspension covers that stage in detail.

Price gouging and the Amazon price gouging warning

Amazon treats price gouging as the extreme end of the same policy. Its German help page on competitive prices states that Amazon continually evaluates offers for what could be considered price gouging under local regulations. While local laws vary, Amazon says it may remove an offer that is egregiously higher than the typical price for that item. The seller then receives a notification on the Pricing Health page, on Manage All Inventory and by email, together with any reference price Amazon can share.

Most price gouging warnings we see start during a supply shock. A product sells out across the market, the only remaining offers belong to third-party sellers, and a repricer without a ceiling climbs. Amazon compares that price with the item’s typical price, not with what the market will bear that week. Demand is never a defense. The response that clears a price gouging warning shows the price back at or below the typical price and a ceiling that stops it from climbing again.

How it shows up

Sellers usually meet the policy in one of three ways. A policy warning in Seller Central cites the Marketplace Fair Pricing Policy. The Featured Offer disappears from a detail page and the offer is listed as ineligible in Pricing Health. Or the reference price stops displaying on the listing. Amazon’s Pricing Health page also shows offers that have been deactivated because of potential pricing errors, which Amazon detects using factors including the Fair Pricing Policy and the minimum and maximum prices you set yourself. If your Featured Offer has gone, our guide to Amazon Featured Offer removed for pricing walks through that situation step by step.

How Amazon Compares Prices On and Off Amazon

Amazon does not publish its formula. It does publish the inputs it uses, and those inputs tell you which records you need to defend a price.

The reference prices in Pricing Health

Amazon’s Pricing Health page lists the reference prices it may show when your offer is priced higher than recent prices.

The Featured Offer price.
The 60-day average selling price.
The highest 14-day price for the item shipped and sold by Amazon.
The product’s list price.
The price derived from the per-unit Featured Offer price for a smaller bundle of the same product.
The typical price.
The 60-day average offer price.

Amazon’s guidance is to align the offer’s total price, meaning selling price plus shipping, with these reference prices. For offers that are not competitive with other retailers, Amazon refers to a “competitive external price” and suggests setting the total price at or below it to regain eligibility for the Featured Offer.

Off-Amazon prices count

The policy compares your price with recent prices “on or off Amazon.” Amazon’s German help page on maintaining customer trust with competitive prices explains that Amazon considers prices observed at reputable competing stores. It calculates a product’s recent typical price from inputs including its Amazon sales history, the recommended retail price, available reference price information and offers for the same or similar products at other reputable retailers. Your price history on Amazon is only part of the picture. If the same product sells widely elsewhere for much less, a high Amazon price can be flagged even if you have charged it for months.

Why repricers cause most cases

Sellers running automated repricers see the most flags. In a common pattern, competitors run out of stock, the repricer is set to raise price when it holds the only offer, and the price climbs far above the recent range. The repricer did what it was told. Amazon sees a sudden jump against its reference prices. The cure is a ceiling on every rule, tied to recent selling prices, and a monthly review of the rules themselves.

Open each reference price to see what moves your offer against it, what Amazon can measure and what it reads into a gap.

Pricing flags often arrive alongside inventory holds on the same SKUs, and our article on releasing FBA inventory flagged as unsuitable covers that side of the account.

When a deactivated offer is a top seller and the reference price in Pricing Health makes no sense for your product, our listing recovery specialists can read the flag with you and build the price evidence before you resubmit.

Shipping Fees and Reference Prices

Two parts of a listing carry fair pricing risk that sellers often overlook, the shipping charge and the reference price shown as a discount.

Shipping is part of the price

Amazon’s policy names excessive shipping fees as a separate trigger, and Pricing Health measures the total price, selling price plus shipping. A merchant-fulfilled seller who lists an item at a low price to rank well and recovers the margin through a high shipping charge is judged on the total. Amazon considers current public carrier rates, reasonable handling charges and buyer perception. A shipping fee well above what a carrier would charge for that weight and distance is the kind of fee the policy targets.

To run it compliantly, set shipping templates from actual carrier rates plus a documented handling amount, review them whenever carrier rates change, and judge every price on the shipping-inclusive total.

What Amazon says about List Price

Amazon’s policy on reference prices explains that in many categories you can supply a reference price such as a List Price, for example a manufacturer’s suggested retail price. Amazon may display it on detail pages and in search results to show savings. The rule that governs it is specific. Amazon requires that the List Price you provide represent the price at which you, or other retailers or sellers, have recently made or intend to make substantial sales of the product. You are responsible for keeping it current, and for keeping it consistent across multiple listings of the same product.

Amazon also explains your options when you do not have a List Price that meets that rule. A possible value is the first price at which you offered or will offer the product, or you can enter 0 to indicate you have no List Price. If Amazon cannot verify your List Price, it might not use it. That is the most common reason an Amazon reference price is not displayed on the detail page, and it is not a penalty on its own. The strike-through disappears until the figure is supportable.

What Amazon says about Was Price

Sellers sometimes believe they set the Was Price. Amazon’s policy states that the Was Price is automatically computed and changes over time, and that Amazon excludes prices customers paid while the product was on a limited-time promotion. You control the List Price field. You do not control the Was Price, so a “fake Was Price” is not something a seller can set directly. What a seller can do is distort the history it is built from, for example by holding an inflated price briefly before a discount.

Multi-unit offers

Amazon names one more practice that catches brands with pack-size variations, selling multiple units for more per unit than a single unit. A two-pack priced above twice the single unit fails that test. Pricing Health’s reference prices include one derived from the per-unit price of a smaller bundle of the same product, which is how Amazon spots it. Check per-unit math across every pack size whenever you change a price, and recheck it whenever the single unit goes on sale.

Correcting Prices and Restoring the Offer

Once a warning arrives or an offer is removed, speed and documentation matter more than argument. Our method follows the same structure for every pricing case.

Step 1. Identify the SKU and the mechanism

Name the exact SKU and what set the price, whether a repricer rule, a manual change, a shipping template, or a List Price entry. Pull the price history for the SKU and the repricer log for the period. The root cause in a strong response names the SKU, the mechanism and the date. “Pricing error” alone is not a root cause.

Step 2. Correct the price and the rule

Fix the total price first. Then fix whatever produced it. Add a ceiling to the repricer rule, correct the shipping template, or replace the List Price with a value that reflects recent substantial sales, or with 0. Amazon’s Pricing Health page lets you revise price data to align with reference prices, and it offers one-click actions for many pricing opportunities. Amazon also lets you set your own minimum and maximum prices. Offers priced outside those limits are deactivated as potential pricing errors, which is a useful safety net if your limits are set correctly.

Step 3. Audit the catalog for the same issue

One flagged SKU usually means others share the same rule or template. Run the same check on every SKU using that repricer rule, that shipping template or a List Price entered at the same time. Record how many SKUs you checked and how many you changed.

Step 4. Restore and confirm

For Featured Offer eligibility, the change often takes effect once the total price is back within the reference range, and Amazon notifies sellers through Pricing Health. For a removed offer, follow the instructions in the notification. Amazon’s German Fair Pricing page states that Amazon informs sellers when the policy affects their offers or selling privileges and gives them the option to resubmit a listing after addressing the issue, and that sellers can complain about a policy determination by contacting Selling Partner Support. The US Pricing Health page likewise invites sellers who believe Amazon made an error to contact it.

Step 5. If the account is affected

If Amazon has moved to an account-level action, the response becomes a Plan of Action submitted from Account Health. Our position in these cases is that prices are set independently and in good faith, and that any flagged price has been corrected. The plan names the SKU and mechanism, lists the corrections with numbers, describes the pricing procedure with Fair Pricing guardrails, reference price review and a change log, and attaches the price history, the old and new repricer settings and the corrected configuration. Never argue that the price was justified by demand, and never blame the repricer vendor. If this is not the first pricing action on the account, our guide on repeated pricing violations and suspension covers the pattern case.

Price audit checklist (item price, shipping, list price)

Item price. Within the recent range shown by Pricing Health reference prices, and explainable from your own price history.
Total price. Item price plus shipping compared with the Featured Offer price and any competitive external price shown.
Shipping. Template built from current carrier rates plus a documented handling amount.
List Price. A price at which you or others have recently made or intend to make substantial sales, or 0.
Consistency. The same List Price on every listing of the same product.
Multi-unit offers. Per-unit price of each pack at or below the single unit.
Repricer. Every rule has a ceiling tied to recent selling prices, and your minimum and maximum prices are set in Seller Central.
Change log. Every price change has a date, a reason and a person or rule recorded.

What Never to Do With List Prices

The prevention lesson for this policy is to set prices from documented recent selling prices, and to use a List Price only when it reflects real recent sales. These are the practices that break that rule.

Never enter a List Price nobody pays. A suggested retail price that no retailer charges for substantial sales does not meet Amazon’s standard, and it creates a discount that is not real.
Never raise the price briefly to set up a discount. Holding a high price for a short time and then cutting it distorts the history Amazon uses for the Was Price and can make your later price look like a markdown that is not real.
Never use different List Prices for the same product across listings.
Never leave a stale List Price in place after the market price has fallen. Amazon makes you responsible for keeping it current.
Never move margin into shipping to make the item price look low.
Never run a repricer without a ceiling, especially on products that sell out in a season or an emergency.

US federal guidance points the same way. The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing, published at 16 C.F.R. part 233, treat a former price as a fair basis for comparison when it is the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis. Section 233.3 adds that a list price holds up only where substantial sales, meaning sales that are not isolated or insignificant, are made at that price in the trade area. Amazon’s List Price rule tracks that logic closely.

The left column is a List Price practice that creates a discount that is not real. The right column is what holds up. Compare each row.

Brands that tighten pricing controls usually audit listing eligibility at the same time, and our prohibited products precheck before you ship to FBA fits into that same review.

Regional Differences and the Law by Region

The Fair Pricing Policy exists on Amazon’s US, EU and UK stores, and the wording differs by store. The law behind it differs too. The rules below are the published texts, and a seller facing a regulator rather than Amazon should take advice from a lawyer licensed in that market.

How the policy wording differs

United States. Four named practices, with actions of removing the Featured Offer, removing the offer, suspending the ship option, or in serious or repeated cases suspending or terminating selling privileges.
United Kingdom. The same four practices. The actions listed include removing the Buy Box, removing the offer, or in serious or repeated cases suspending or terminating selling privileges.
Germany. Amazon describes statistical models that use historical offer prices, prices from other retailers and sales data. The named practices include misleading, fraudulent or unfair prices that violate applicable laws, such as book fixed price laws in Germany, higher per-unit prices for larger pack sizes, excessive shipping fees measured against public carrier rates for weight, dimensions, speed and distance, and prices significantly higher than recent prices online or in physical stores.

The law behind it

Region	Law	Relevance
United States	FTC Act, Section 5, 15 U.S.C. 45	Prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce, the basis of FTC action on deceptive pricing.
United States	FTC Guides Against Deceptive Pricing, 16 C.F.R. part 233	Former price and list price comparisons must reflect genuine prices at which the product was offered or sold.
European Union	Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Directive 2005/29/EC, Article 6(1)(d)	A practice is misleading if it deceives consumers about the price, how it is calculated or the existence of a specific price advantage.
European Union	Price Indication Directive 98/6/EC, Article 6a, inserted by Directive (EU) 2019/2161	Any announced price reduction must show the prior price, meaning the lowest price applied in a period of at least 30 days before the reduction. Member States applied it from 28 May 2022.
United Kingdom	Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 226	A commercial practice is a misleading action if it provides false or misleading information about a product or presents it in a way likely to deceive the average consumer.

EU sellers face the strictest discount rule. Our guide to Amazon EU reference prices and the Omnibus discount rule explains how the 30-day prior price rule applies to strike-through prices on EU stores. Article 6a also lets Member States set different rules for perishable goods, a shorter period for products on the market less than 30 days, and a fixed prior price when a reduction is increased step by step.

Notice and complaint rights

On EU stores, the Digital Services Act, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065, gives sellers a statement of reasons for restrictions (Article 17), access to internal complaint handling for at least six months after the decision (Article 20) and certified out-of-court dispute settlement (Article 21). The DSA does not apply in the United Kingdom. UK sellers rely on the retained Platform-to-Business Regulation 2019/1150, Article 4, which requires a statement of reasons on a durable medium for restrictions and suspensions and 30 days’ notice before full termination. One of the exceptions in Article 4(4) applies where the platform can show the business user has repeatedly infringed its terms, which is another reason repeat pricing flags carry more weight than a single one.

Pricing Governance Routine

Fair pricing cases are among the most preventable we handle, because every one of them starts with a number someone could have checked. The routine below is what we put in place for clients.

Before a price goes live

No repricer rule goes live without a written maximum, and the Seller Central maximum price sits below the point where Pricing Health would flag the offer.
New List Prices are approved by one owner, with the source of the figure recorded.
Shipping templates are built from carrier rates and documented handling costs.

Weekly

Review Pricing Health for deactivated offers, Featured Offer ineligibility and offers priced well above reference prices. Amazon also lists offers priced within 5% of the Featured Offer price, which shows where a small cut wins the Featured Offer back.
Check the price change log for any jump outside the normal range and confirm who or what made it.

Monthly

Audit every List Price against recent substantial sales and set any that fail to 0 or to a supportable figure.
Review every repricer rule, including ones nobody has touched in months.
Check per-unit pricing across all pack sizes.
Record the audit date, reviewer, findings and changes.

The log is the piece most sellers skip, and it is the piece that matters most if Amazon asks. A price you can explain with a dated record is a pricing decision. A price you cannot explain looks like the problem the policy was written to stop.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Amazon Fair Pricing Policy?

It is Amazon’s policy against pricing practices that harm customer trust. On the US store it names misleading reference prices, prices significantly higher than recent prices on or off Amazon, higher per-unit prices for multi-unit offers, and excessive shipping fees.

Can shipping fees break the Fair Pricing Policy?

Yes, excessive shipping fees are named in the policy. Amazon considers current public carrier rates, reasonable handling charges and buyer perception, and Pricing Health measures the total of item price plus shipping.

What can Amazon do for unfair pricing?

Amazon can remove the Featured Offer, remove the offer, suspend the ship option, or in serious or repeated cases suspend or terminate selling privileges. The first three act on the offer and the last acts on the account.

Why is my reference price not showing?

Amazon may not use a List Price it cannot verify. The List Price must reflect a price at which you or other sellers have recently made or intend to make substantial sales, so replace it with a supportable figure or enter 0.

Is price gouging covered by the Amazon Fair Pricing Policy?

Yes. Amazon says it evaluates offers for what could be price gouging under local regulations and may remove an offer that is egregiously higher than the typical price. The seller is notified in Pricing Health, on Manage All Inventory and by email.

Does a first pricing warning lead to suspension?

Rarely on its own. The US and UK policies reserve suspension or termination for serious or repeated cases, so a first flag usually costs the Featured Offer or the offer until the price is corrected.

How do I fix a Fair Pricing warning?

Correct the price, shipping fee or reference price, fix the rule that produced it and document how prices are set. Audit the catalog for the same issue, keep a price change log, and use Pricing Health to confirm the offer is back within the reference range.

Get Help With an Amazon Fair Pricing Warning

Most offer-level pricing flags can be fixed with the steps above. Once warnings have escalated to an account-level action, the appeal has to show a working pricing control system. We help design and document that system and build the Plan of Action around it.

Go straight to our Amazon suspension and reinstatement service and our listing recovery service, submit your case for a free assessment, or book a consultation to review your pricing controls. Related listing issues are covered in our guides to restricted product listings removed, category and brand ungating and product compliance documents.

Sellers dealing with flags on Walmart, eBay or TikTok Shop as well as Amazon can find each platform’s desk on our marketplace suspension hub.

How to Fix an Amazon Fair Pricing Policy Warning and Offer