Why is my coupon code not working?

Most rejected codes fail for a reason the shop never spells out: a minimum spend the basket has not reached, an exclusion on sale items, a first-order-only rule, or one promotion already applied. The error message is almost always the same regardless of which it was. Work through the eight below in order — the first three account for the majority.

1. The basket is under the minimum spend

By far the most common. A code written for “$15 off orders over $100” is frequently listed, shared and searched for as just “$15 off”, and the condition falls away somewhere in the retelling. Check the total before delivery and tax: most shops measure the threshold on goods alone, so a basket that reaches it only once postage is added will not qualify.

What it looks like: the code is accepted into the field and then quietly does nothing, or the discount line appears and then vanishes at the payment step.

2. Everything in the basket is already reduced

Sale and clearance lines are excluded from most codes, and the exclusion is usually silent. If every item you have chosen is already marked down, a code that works perfectly well on full-price stock will be rejected with no explanation of why.

The test is quick: add one full-price item and try the code again. If it takes, the exclusion was the problem, and you can decide whether the code on the larger basket beats the sale price on the smaller one. Our deals page lists items where the retailer has already taken money off, which is exactly the stock a code is least likely to touch.

3. It is a first-order offer and the account has bought before

Welcome codes are tied to the account, and often to the card or address behind it. Shops check more than the email. If you have ordered before, a “new customer” code will not work, and creating a second account to get around it generally breaks the retailer's terms.

4. Another promotion is already running

Most checkouts allow one code per order. If the shop has applied an automatic discount, a bundle price, or a loyalty reward, your code is competing with it rather than adding to it. Remove the other one if you can and compare the two totals — the automatic one is not always the better.

5. The offer is limited to a category

A code can be written for one part of the catalogue only: footwear, small appliances, a single brand within a marketplace. Nothing on the page says so unless you open the terms. If a code was listed under a particular category, it is worth checking that what you are buying belongs to it — our category pages group each retailer's offers the way the retailer files them.

6. It has expired since it was published

Retailers withdraw offers whenever they like, sometimes mid-day and sometimes without changing the published end date. Every offer on this site comes from the retailer's own feed and is read again daily, so a withdrawn code stops being listed — but a shop can pull one between two imports, and for those hours it is still on the page.

This is the one case where the votes matter. Every code here asks whether it worked when you reveal it, and those votes are the fastest warning the next shopper gets. If a code fails, voting it down takes a second and is genuinely useful to whoever arrives after you.

7. The code is case-sensitive, or a space came with it

Worth ruling out before assuming the offer is dead. Copying from a page often brings a trailing space, and a minority of checkouts treat SAVE20 and save20 as different strings. Type it by hand once before giving up on it.

8. Delivery is being paid separately

A percentage code almost always applies to goods, not postage. If you are looking at the order total and expecting the discount to come off all of it, the figure will look wrong even though the code worked correctly.

What to do when none of these explain it

Open the retailer's own terms for that promotion — they are usually linked from the offer and are the only complete statement of what it covers. If the terms say the code should apply and it does not, the shop's customer service can honour it manually more often than people expect, particularly before the order is placed.

And a note on what we can and cannot tell you: we publish offers as the retailers publish them, and we do not take codes to a checkout ourselves. What happens to your particular basket is settled at their payment page, not here. Where our offers come from sets out the whole of it.

Getting the price down another way

If a code genuinely will not apply, the reduction may already be on the price. Products lists items with what they cost before, and offers ending soon is worth a look before you settle — a better code from the same shop is often a week old and about to lapse.