HACKER Q&A
📣 brailsafe

Can I get my Amazon account back?


I was recently contacted by an Amazon recruiter and asked to apply for a few jobs in my area. Upon realizing that I gave him the email of my regular Amazon account, I endeavored to re-activate it after it had previously been locked by Amazon for apparent suspicious activity. I'm fairly sure I called them at the time, with no result, but this time around, they're telling me to get fucked, essentially.

The first rep I spoke to said that because I had no purchase history in the last year, she was unable to verify my account, even after sending me a 2FA auth code, and refusing to accept any prior confirmation codes or information from any other receipts I had in my archive.

The second rep I spoke to said that my account "did not have the information available to answer the questions needed to verify my account" and that she "can't tell me what that required information is, because my system tells me the account doesn't have it".

I've used this account for many years, and yes I haven't used it for purchases in a year, because largely I didn't have a job and didn't have the time to go through a lengthy phone tree. At no point was I told me account would become irrecoverable. Now though, they're telling me my only option is to re-create the account with the same email address, obviously losing my purchase history and any documents or other records I've uploaded over the years. This is all not to say there wasn't suspicious activity on the account. There was, and I did contact Amazon about this, and they were not able to help me before locking the account.

Do I have any recourse? This seems insane. I'm in Canada.


  👤 softwarebeware Accepted Answer ✓
What’s the loss for you if you did reset the account, or even just started a new one with another email address?

Also I’m not clear why being contacted by a recruiter at Amzn was relevant to the story?