Will my Black Friday discount make my regular price look too high on Amazon?
It can, and it may come down to how you run the discount. Amazon's Fair Pricing policy flags a price that is significantly higher than recent prices, and Amazon's own pricing documentation leaves prices from its promotion tools out of the 60-day average selling price. A price you simply type lower by hand has no such exclusion in Amazon's text, so in my reading, a weekend markdown can become one of the recent prices your regular price is later compared with.
Picture a shop that marks a sweater down for the weekend, then puts the old tag back on Monday. A shopper who came in on Saturday would call Monday's price a markup. Amazon's price checks can read your holiday discount the same way.
What Amazon says it measures
Amazon's Fair Pricing policy lists "setting a price on a product or service that is significantly higher than recent prices offered on or off Amazon" as a practice that harms customer trust.
That policy is one of the policies counted in your Account Health Rating, according to Amazon's list of policies included in the rating.
When Amazon sees such a price, the Fair Pricing policy says it can remove the Featured Offer, remove the offer, suspend the ship option, or in serious or repeated cases suspend or terminate selling privileges.
How Amazon builds one of its reference prices
Amazon's developer documentation on pricing defines a product's average selling price as the sum of the prices customers paid in the Amazon store over the last 60 days, divided by units sold.
The same documentation then adds the key sentence: "Prices and quantity sold during promotions (for example, Best Deals, Lightning Deals) are excluded."
That documentation also says an offer can lose Featured Offer eligibility when its total price is higher than recent prices.
Amazon used the same logic in its Holiday 2026 announcement for sellers: Prime Big Deal Days promotional prices are excluded from the 30-day and 60-day lookback for the maximum deal price required for Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday deals.
The difference nobody talks about
Here's my reading, and it is my reading, not Amazon's words. A discount run through Amazon's deal tools is excluded from that 60-day average by Amazon's own definition. A plain price edit, typed straight into the price field, has no such exclusion anywhere in the text I've read.
So a quick weekend markdown can end up inside the "recent prices" your regular price is later compared with. When the weekend ends and you go back up, your normal price can read as higher than recent prices.
Two honest limits. Amazon doesn't say how coupons are treated, and it doesn't define "significantly." I won't guess at either.
And notice the words "on or off Amazon" in the policy. Other retailers' Black Friday prices are part of the picture too.
Why the hand edit is so tempting in the run-up to Black Friday
Bidding bots don't tire and don't wait for a weekly report. They react within minutes, read the same signals and raise bids at the same moment, which pushes click prices up and drains budgets.
When every click costs more, a price cut typed in by hand feels like the fastest way to make each click convert. In my view, that's exactly the edit that can follow you into December.
Our take
A holiday price isn't one decision. It's two: the number, and the tool you use to set it. Sellers who make the second decision on purpose go into December with a price history that works for them. The ones who don't can find their own Black Friday price became the yardstick.
One first step for today: before you lower any price for Black Friday weekend, write down for each SKU whether the discount will run through Amazon's deal tools or as a plain price edit.
Frequently asked questions
Are Amazon deal prices counted in the 60-day average selling price?
No. Amazon's developer documentation on pricing says prices and quantity sold during promotions, for example Best Deals and Lightning Deals, are excluded from the average selling price.
Does a price I lower by hand count as a recent price?
Amazon's text does not exclude it, and that is the point of this page. My reading is that a manual price edit can count among the recent prices you are later compared with. Amazon does not say so in those words.
What can Amazon do if my price is significantly higher than recent prices?
Amazon's Fair Pricing policy says it can remove the Featured Offer, remove the offer, suspend the ship option, or in serious or repeated cases suspend or terminate selling privileges.
Are coupons treated like deals?
Amazon does not say in the pages I read, so I won't guess. Check the current wording in Seller Central before you plan around coupons.
Do other retailers' prices count?
Amazon's Fair Pricing policy speaks of recent prices "offered on or off Amazon," so prices outside Amazon are part of the comparison.
Talk to us
If your Black Friday price list is still taking shape, bring it to Market Wize before the markdowns go live: info@market-wize.com or https://www.market-wize.com.