Amazon Services
Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) Documentation

Deprecation Notice:

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS) will no longer be available after March 31, 2024. All MWS developers must migrate to Selling Partner API (SP-API) to avoid service disruptions. Refer to the Migration Hub for more information.

Amazon MWS Documentation

Handling errors

Amazon Marketplace Web Service (Amazon MWS) deals with errors using the standard HTTP Response status codes. A message is normally sent with the error code to explain more about the error so that the problem it can be fixed or reported.

Error codes

These error codes are common to all Amazon MWS API sections. For error codes that are specific to an API section, see that API's corresponding error codes section reference.

Table 1. Common HTTP error status codes
Error code HTTP status code Description
InputStreamDisconnected 400 There was an error reading the input stream.
InvalidParameterValue 400 An invalid parameter value was used, or the request size exceeded the maximum accepted size, or the request expired.
AccessDenied 401 Access was denied.
InvalidAccessKeyId 403 An invalid AWSAccessKeyId value was used.
SignatureDoesNotMatch 403 The signature used does not match the server's calculated signature value.
InvalidAddress 404 An invalid API section or operation value was used, or an invalid path was used.
InternalError 500 There was an internal service failure.
QuotaExceeded 503 The total number of requests in an hour was exceeded.
RequestThrottled 503 The frequency of requests was greater than allowed.

When you get an error

Each error is accompanied with enough information to help you research a fix for the error on the client side. When your research can't resolve the problem, you can request assistance from Amazon MWS technical support. However, before calling Amazon MWS technical support, please do the following:

  1. Review the request that preceded the problem. Then, look for the problem described in the error message. Resolve it, if possible.
  2. Record the RequestId and Timestamp of the best example request that generated the error.
  3. If you cannot resolve the problem and need to call for technical support, Amazon needs the RequestId and Timestamp to locate the specific instance of your issue in our logs.
Important: You should record and retain for 30 days the RequestId and Timestamp for every request that you submit to Amazon MWS. Doing this enables Amazon to diagnose and fix any problems that you might encounter, helping to improve your experience using Amazon MWS. Without this information, requests to Amazon MWS support will take longer to resolve.

Service errors

The common response to a 500 or 503 service error is to try the request again. Such service errors are usually only temporary and will resolve themselves. If you want to retry an operation call after receiving a 500 or 503 error, you can immediately retry after the first error response. However, if you want to retry multiple times, Amazon recommends that you implement an "exponential backoff" approach (i.e. pausing between retrys), with up to four retries. Then, log the error and proceed with a manual follow-up and investigation. For example, you can time your retries with the following time spacing: 1s, 4s, 10s, 30s. The actual backoff times and limit will depend upon your business processes.

References

In this section