Hello!

I went to make a purchase tonight and planned to apply the July Prime Members coupon. However, when I went to apply it, I kept getting "Not authorized" responses on the checkout page. After clicking "Apply" button for the coupon input field, the checkout page would reload with an error bar near the top with the "not authorized" message, just like if you enter an invalid or expired coupon code, but with a different message.

Unfortunately, since it was near midnight at the end of the month, and some of the items I wanted were on sales that expired the same day, I went ahead with the purchase, sans coupon. So I'm basically interested in whether the benefit can be applied retroactively. Assuming I'm not nuts and doing something brain-dead here.

Additional info.

• I've used coupons here many, many times in the past, including on the current version of the site, so I'm pretty familiar with the process.
• I tried copy/pasting the code.
• I was doing this before midnight in Central Time. Usually that's the cutoff for coupon codes (and sales and whatnot).
• According to my account details, my Prime status should be good until August 31, 2017.
• I checked to make sure I had not already used the coupon. I did use the July 4th coupon, but not the monthly. (My next most recent purchase was in May.) I've made that mistake before and it gave a clear error message indicating what the problem was, rather than "Not authorized to use that coupon".
• The issue was not that the coupon did not apply to specific items, which I know is normal, depending on the item and the coupon. Rather, it simply would not let me apply the coupon to the transaction at all.
• The Order# was 113050224.

Honestly, the error message sounds like the system thinks my Prime membership was expired, which it shouldn't be, and doesn't appear to be from what I can see.

Hi,
This coupon has been used several times and Unfortunately there is nothing we can do now that the purchase has been made. There is a new coupon in the Prime Forum you can try to use. If you have an issue like this again let us know and wait to make the purchase until we can look at it.

Regards,
Preston

Hi, PrestonW,

No problem, I rather expected nothing could be done after the fact, but I had to ask.

I am a bit confused by one thing you said, though: how could a single-use coupon have been used several times? Also, I can look at my purchase history and see that I did not use this one. I assume you guys can do the same.

While I'm not particularly concerned about this specific purchase, I am concerned that something is wrong with the system.

Used several times by several different vendors. No one vendor used it more than once.

Hi, PrestonW,

At this point I'm only asking questions to improve my understanding of how all this works, so I don't ask silly questions in the future.

Could you explain what it means for vendors to "use" coupon codes, and how that relates to my attempt to apply it to a purchase?

Many thanks!

When you use a coupon you simply enter the code into the box and hit apply. We are not sure what the issue is. As far as I can tell the coupon should have applied. From what I can see, you did everything correct unless there was a space before or after which sometimes happens when you copy and paste. But since the order has been made we cannot look into it any further.

Yep, that much I understand.

Thanks for the info.