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Being common doesn't mean it's working. Every single time I see a coupon box I have to search for a code. Then sometimes I get pissed if I can't find a discount and go somewhere else.

But the author clearly states that they "rarely have any publicly available discount codes active on our site."

Why have a checkout process where you are going to send a non insignificant percent of your users on a wild goose chase, possibly annoying them and/or distracting them when they were about to buy a product. Then blame your affiliates for "scamming" you. It doesn't make much sense.

Also note that discount codes are different to voucher codes, such as gift vouchers, which I believe is what Amazon does.

For a client of mine we added a discount code box to the checkout and got a surge of calls from people asking how to get a discount code. It was actually intended for some multi-channel marketing.

We now don't have discount codes in the checkout process.