The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Be aware of this before buying from Cheap-UPC-Barcode.com

JAJT

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
549%
Aug 7, 2012
2,970
16,306
Ontario, Canada
Fun little fact about GS1 (at least Canada) - they charge you $150 to cancel (almost like charging another year's worth of service for trying to leave) and their customer support is beyond useless.

I had to cancel because my most recent business wasn't working out, so I called to cancel and was told you can only cancel online. They gave me the cancellation page but I had to enter my company's user ID but it kept saying "not found". Called them up, said they'd have support figure it out and insisted that it was impossible to cancel by phone because cancelling required payment through their automated system which was only handled online. Yay...

A month goes by, support never gets back to me, and I get an email about an overdue invoice. Call them back up, get more useless advice ("I'll send the link again!") and then I'm told that there is no manager to speak to, I still can't cancel by phone, and after a pretty lengthy ear-lashing (trying to see how far I can push this at this point) a frustrated rep tells me that the fee still isn't negotiable and there's literally nothing she can do.

Finally get the cancel page to work (I guess they were having system issues that got resolved finally), paid my $150 (plus tax!), and began thinking about how difficult it would be to compete with them because there is clearly room for improvement here.

Honestly, I've had nothing but bad experiences with GS1 from day 1. Easily the most expensive service I paid for (and cancelled) for the least value provided. They didn't even offer UPC graphic design tools when I signed up. Not even a number generator to easily copy all the numbers I paid for. Just a "calculation tool" that was ultra manual and needed to be used for each and every number. Ended up just creating my own tool in excel to automate it.

GS1 is a joke in my experience. A necessary joke, as they are the only legit game in town for proper barcode numbers, but still a joke. Maybe it's just a GS1 Canada thing...
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

BarCodesTalk

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
33%
Jun 19, 2019
3
1
It seems this issue is finally coming to a head. Anyone that tracks Amazon seller boards has seen a flurry of posts over the past week. Seems Amazon is in the process of a catalog purge, having something to do with GS1 barcode matches. Anyone here been affected by this yet?
...
In typical fashion, nobody knows exactly what happened over the weekend, but thousands of sellers were taken down over the weekend over "ASIN creation policy violations."

Jonathan here, General manager of BarCodesTalk. From our understanding this was Amazon purging blatant illegally duplicated GTIN's (UPC's/EAN's) from sellers profiles. What this means is that those sellers had used, ignorant of the facts or not, self-invented barcode numbers on amazon. This purge was low hanging fruit since Amazon easily partnered with GS1 (they're on the board of directors of GS1 after all) and see which GTIN's GS1 had not rented out yet and compare that with which one's were actively in use on Amazon. This should have been implemented years ago in our opinion but one step at a time.

What this purge did not do was affect any GTIN's from GS1-USA (formerly the UCC ,1970's to 2002) as these are grandfathered in under the terms of the UCC settlement. More on that settlement here: UCC Settlement | Bar Codes Talk

Our direct experience is Amazon's policy is for sellers to rent their GTIN's from GS1 directly but they only enforce this measure in 1 seller category; Brand Registry as at that level most sellers can easily afford the $$$ + annual fees to GS1. For all other sellers they can buy from legal resellers and use them just fine.
 

Vigilante

Legendary Contributor
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
596%
Oct 31, 2011
11,116
66,265
Gulf Coast
Jonathan here, General manager of BarCodesTalk. From our understanding this was Amazon purging blatant illegally duplicated GTIN's (UPC's/EAN's) from sellers profiles. What this means is that those sellers had used, ignorant of the facts or not, self-invented barcode numbers on amazon. This purge was low hanging fruit since Amazon easily partnered with GS1 (they're on the board of directors of GS1 after all) and see which GTIN's GS1 had not rented out yet and compare that with which one's were actively in use on Amazon. This should have been implemented years ago in our opinion but one step at a time.

What this purge did not do was affect any GTIN's from GS1-USA (formerly the UCC ,1970's to 2002) as these are grandfathered in under the terms of the UCC settlement. More on that settlement here: UCC Settlement | Bar Codes Talk

Our direct experience is Amazon's policy is for sellers to rent their GTIN's from GS1 directly but they only enforce this measure in 1 seller category; Brand Registry as at that level most sellers can easily afford the $$$ + annual fees to GS1. For all other sellers they can buy from legal resellers and use them just fine.

So far.
 

BarCodesTalk

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
33%
Jun 19, 2019
3
1

You're exactly right. This is an incredibly niche industry and things change, especially with Amazon, seemingly quarterly.

This is why we keep an up to date industry list of stores that do or may require licensing with GS1 here: Support : Bar Codes Talk - If I have a Bar Code Will it Work in All Stores?

So much misinformation out there, GS1 does not want people to own, not good for business.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

Latest Posts

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top