HACKER Q&A
📣 ShinyCyril

Amazon stonewalling me after they closed my account – how to resolve?


Morning all,

I decided to cash-out $3k-worth of Rocketrip points (a workplace scheme which rewards reduced-cost business travel) on Amazon gift-cards to purchase some things to furnish my new home in the US (just moved here – from UK originally). As a result, Amazon have closed my account, given a very vague justification of "address verification" and voided my entire balance.

I have called several times and have been led in circles on each occasion. When I was finally able to get through to a supervisor, he refused to give me the actual reason for my account closure and hung up after I repeatedly asked him to pass me to someone who could actually help resolve this situation.

I have filed a complaint with BBB, and emailed the second-line jeff@amazon.com address, but I'm not really holding out much hope for a reply / resolution.

Fundamentally I am rather upset that I am being made to feel like a criminal, when in fact my order was perfectly legitimate. Most frustratingly I would happily provide proof that I reside at this address, if only I were afforded the opportunity to do so! Furthermore, my Kindle is now absolutely useless, as is my personal AWS account (although I'm grateful I don't have anything important stored in the cloud – that could have been a lot worse!). Having been a customer of theirs for ~10 years, I'm astounded that they are not at all bothered about trying to sort out a resolution.

Does anyone have any further suggestions as to how I can resolve this situation?

Much appreciated.


  👤 paulcole Accepted Answer ✓
> I have filed a complaint with BBB

This doesn’t do much for you, but anyone reading this should know:

BBB is private and little more than your parents’ Yelp. Pay for play and without any actual power. Despite the tricky name it’s not governmental in any way.


👤 jlgaddis
Head down to your county courthouse and file a cause in small claims court.

👤 anonymousiam
Amazon may be in violation of federal law here. Ask a lawyer. http://www.ncsl.org/research/financial-services-and-commerce...

👤 brudgers
Since the cards are not honored, it might be worth contacting the organization that provided them to you instead of Amazon. Amazon is a third party to the "cashing out" transaction.

👤 rchaudhary
Email jeff@amazon.com and there are good chances that someone from his team will get back to you.