diff --git a/src/oscar/apps/customer/abstract_models.py b/src/oscar/apps/customer/abstract_models.py
index 1addf2b7348..f15c78907c2 100644
--- a/src/oscar/apps/customer/abstract_models.py
+++ b/src/oscar/apps/customer/abstract_models.py
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 from django.conf import settings
 from django.contrib.auth import models as auth_models
 from django.core.urlresolvers import reverse
+from django.core.validators import RegexValidator
 from django.db import models
 from django.template import Template, Context, TemplateDoesNotExist
 from django.template.loader import get_template
@@ -141,6 +142,12 @@ class AbstractCommunicationEventType(models.Model):
     code = AutoSlugField(
         _('Code'), max_length=128, unique=True, populate_from='name',
         separator=six.u("_"), uppercase=True, editable=True,
+        validators=[
+            RegexValidator(
+                regex=r'^[a-zA-Z_][0-9a-zA-Z_]*$',
+                message=_(
+                    "Code can only contain the letters a-z, A-Z, digits, "
+                    "and underscores, and can't start with a digit"))],
         help_text=_("Code used for looking up this event programmatically"))
 
     #: Name is the friendly description of an event for use in the admin
diff --git a/tests/unit/customer/test_models.py b/tests/unit/customer/test_models.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..edf305ed221
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/unit/customer/test_models.py
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+import pytest
+from django.core import exceptions
+
+from oscar.apps.customer import models
+
+
+def test_communication_event_type_code_forbids_hyphens():
+    ctype = models.CommunicationEventType(code="A-B")
+    with pytest.raises(exceptions.ValidationError):
+        ctype.full_clean()