Invalid Products
Introduction
Products stored in the Products section can become invalid when they no longer exist on Amazon. This happens when Amazon permanently removes a product listing. ASA2 detects these products automatically during refresh and marks them with a distinct status, so they can be identified and managed.
When does a product become invalid?
A product is marked as "Invalid Product" when the Amazon API returns specific error messages indicating that the product ID (ASIN) no longer exists:
- PA API: "InvalidParameterValue: The ItemId XXX provided in the request is invalid."
- Creators API: "No items found for the requested item IDs"
This is different from temporarily unavailable products (out of stock, price unavailable), which keep their normal status. For information about handling unavailable products, see Product Replacement.
Status Display in the Product List
Invalid products are displayed with a red dismiss icon in the Connection Status column. Hovering over the icon shows a tooltip with:
- "Invalid Product"
- The date when the product was first detected as invalid (e.g. "since Feb 4, 2026")
- The retry counter showing how many cronjob refresh attempts have been made (e.g. "3/5 retries")
.. TODO: Screenshot needed - Product list showing an invalid product with the red dismiss icon and tooltip.
Filtering Invalid Products
The product list status filter includes an "Invalid Product" option. Select it to show only products with invalid status.
.. TODO: Screenshot needed - Status filter dropdown with "Invalid Product" option highlighted.
Bulk Deleting Invalid Products
A dedicated bulk action "Delete Invalid Products" is available in the product list. This permanently removes all invalid products from the Products section.
Steps:
- Open the Products section list page
- Select the "Delete Invalid Products" bulk action from the dropdown
- Click "Apply"
- Confirm the deletion in the confirmation dialog
.. TODO: Screenshot needed - Bulk actions dropdown showing "Delete Invalid Products".
Recovery: When an Invalid Product Becomes Valid
If a product that was marked as invalid becomes available again on Amazon (e.g. the listing was restored), ASA2 will automatically recover it during refresh:
- The status is reset to "Connected to API"
- The "invalid since" timestamp is removed
- The retry counter is reset to 0
- Product data is updated with fresh API data
This recovery can happen through:
- The Product Update Cronjob (within the retry limit)
- A manual refresh from the product editor (always works, no retry limit)
Options
The options for invalid products can be found under Options > Products > Invalid Products. For more details, see Products Options: Invalid Products.
Cronjob Interaction
Products that are detected as permanently invalid are handled specially by the Product Update Cronjob.
By default, the cronjob will attempt to refresh an invalid product up to 5 times. After that, the product is permanently excluded from future cronjob runs to save API quota. This limit is configurable via Options > Products > Invalid Products > Max refresh retries (see Products Options: Invalid Products).
| Retry count vs. limit | Cronjob behavior |
|---|---|
| Counter < limit | Product is included in refresh, counter incremented if still invalid |
| Counter >= limit | Product is excluded from refresh |
| Refresh succeeds | Status reset to OK, counter cleared |
Setting the max retries to 0 excludes all invalid products from the cronjob immediately.
To manually refresh a product regardless of the retry counter, use the "Refresh item data" checkbox on the product editor page.