Amazon Product API ItemLook is returning invalid ItemID even though it is valid

Question

When calling ItemLookup to for ASIN B00281Z86A, I am getting an error

 B00281Z86A is not a valid value for ItemId. Please change this value and retry your request.

More complete

   
  {"Request":{"IsValid":"True","ItemLookupRequest":{"IdType":"ASIN","ItemId":"B00281Z86A","ResponseGroup":"Medium","VariationPage":"All"},"Errors":{"Error":{"Code":"AWS.InvalidParameterValue","Message":"B00281Z86A is not a valid value for ItemId. Please change this value and retry your request."}

This is a valid Amazon item as you can see here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00281Z86A

Intermezzo

Answer 1

The fact that a product, with particular ASIN, exists on Amazon web site doesn't mean that it will be available through the Amazon Product API.

There is obviously inconsistency between the Product API repository and the one for the products you see on the Amazon web pages (whether it's is related to the price, color, images etc). You can't do much about that - all you can do is to wait for it to become available through the API (sometimes it happens that the content become available with delay).

I've been experiencing the same problem with Amazon API for years.

UPDATE:

Problem with this particular product is that its ASIN has been changed, so you've been using wrong ASIN to fetch the product via API.

If you look carefully on the web page for your original link, you'll notice that the ASIN listed on the page (B00H1OUSD2) is different from the one you've been using (B00281Z86A). Sometimes Amazon changes the product ASIN (without notifying the API users, of course).

Here is the link with a valid product ASIN (I tried to fetch the product with this ASIN via API and it returned a valid object).

Croaker

This seems like a big problem. Did you try to contact Amazon regarding this? Any idea how do I contact support regarding the Product API? – Intermezzo

I updated the answer, please have a look. Regarding the Amazon Product API...All you can do is to post your problem on their forum (forums.aws.amazon.com/index.jspa), but I have never found anything useful there. I guess their product storage is enormously huge, so it's hard for them to provide you with the fresh content every time. That's why these kind of anomalies appear (fortunately, not often). – Croaker

@CyberMJ, I faced a problem where the api exists, but on the amazon website does not exist (404 page), B00AOHDCQ8. Did you ever experienced that? – Spirelet

@Spirelet I've experienced such behavior before. I believe they've removed the product from the main repository (the one they use for the website), but didn't update the repository the API uses. Although it doesn't happen often. – Croaker

Answer 2

I've just had the same issue. I put about 500 Amazon ASIN numbers through ItemLookup on the API and 40 couldn't be found. I solved the problem by scraping: https://catalog-retail.amazon.co.uk/abis/syh/DisplayCondition?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B000E4EEMM

Hacky? Sure. Does it work? Yes. I got the EAN's for all my 40 missing items.

Hind