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Banned from Amazon: The Shoppers Who Make Too Many Returns
- davemtl 8y agoPay walled article.
- assblaster 8y agoTry fullwsj, it goes through Facebook affiliate link.
- headShrinker 8y agoNow that there is a domain dedicated to this hack I can’t imagine it will last much longer.
- 21 8y agoTrue, it didn't work for me yesterday, but maybe it was just a fluke.
- assblaster 8y agoI've always opened the links in cognito with success, so maybe cookies might have played a part.
- tomhoward 8y agohttp://archive.is/yMAJ0 http://archive.is/yMAJ0
- kelchm 8y agoI learned a new trick on this today. Try appending the URL to this: http://facebook.com/l.php?u= http://facebook.com/l.php?u=
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoCan't say I'm surprised, dealing with returns is expensive, I'd want to block people who abused the system.
- Zelphyr 8y agoOn the one hand, I agree. But with the increasing scammers on Amazon, this policy is going to bite them. I ordered a Nest Protect a few years ago and what I received was a cheap First Alert detector inside a Nest’s box. Did I get flagged for that return? As an aside, clearly their returns department doesn’t bother to check returns like they indicate with a “Amazon Inspected” sticker on the box. So not only was I scammed, but Amazon was complicit in it AND may have penalized me for the return. Lately I’ve gone through three adaptors from three different manufacturers and sellers and every one of them has broken within weeks, maybe months, of receiving it. And they all had great reviews at the time I bought them. But when I go back later, I notice a lot of obviously fake reviews that weren’t there before. Not sure how that scam works but it’s costing me money. I used to stay with Amazon in large part because of their fantastic customer service, but that’s not enough anymore. The scammers are running rampant on their platform and Amazon is choosing to view me as the troublemaker.
- jaclaz 8y agoFrom the article: “If your behavior is consistently outside the norm, you’re not really the kind of customer they want,” said James Thomson, a former senior manager at Amazon and now partner at brand consultancy Buy Box Experts. Today it is Amazon normalization, tomorrow ...?
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Today it is Amazon normalization, tomorrow ...? Companies “firing”, both explicitly by bans and by putting them into service hell until they go away, customers that are expensive to service because their behavior is outside of what the firm is optimized around is decidedly not new or something Amazon invented.
- dqv 8y agoThey shouldn't do this. One time I made an order with a few things, but namely cat litter and an (expensive) air filter. The cat litter and air filter were cutely packaged together with no protection for the air filter. Of course the air filter was smashed and unusable. I forgot this "bug" twice more and realized they weren't going to fix the issue. I determined that I should not order these items from Amazon lest they ban me for returning the filters too many times. I sent feedback each time, but I guess they'd rather just ban customers or whatever.
- jbob2000 8y agoWho orders cat litter from Amazon? The delivery fees on something that heavy would cost as much as the item itself! Yeah, yeah, it's heavy and you might not have a car to pick it up from the store, I get it. But still. Knowing what we know about the amazon warehouses and how quickly the staff are forced to work, maybe it's in your best interest to be cognizant of what you're ordering and not order certain items together.
- c1yd3i 8y agoFree shipping >I determined that I should not order these items from Amazon lest they ban me for returning the filters too many times.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- matwood 8y agoI order all my pet supplies online. Prime covers shipping from Amazon, and Chewy has free shipping on orders over $49. Chewy is great because you can also order prescription foods (they call the vet and verify).
- ryanlol 8y agoI order drinking water from Amazon, beat that!
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- 21 8y agoI know someone who orders toys for their children and returns them after one month when the kids get bored with them and buys new ones.
- thisisit 8y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17124924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17124924 Repeating my comment from the same thread: This isn't surprising at all. Amazon's return policy is prone to social engineering. And there is a cottage industry out there taking advantage of this situation to con money out of Amazon. A friend's account was hacked last year and his account information changed. Then the hacker proceeded to request a gift card refund on a previously purchased laptop. The gift card was then used to buy another laptop shipped to a freight forwarder. Couple of months later, Amazon banned the account. Amazon actually needs to improve its fraud detection capabilities. But until the time it does that, blaming customers for too many returns seem to be the go to strategy.
- Chaebixi 8y ago> Dupe: The previous one seems to have died on the vine. This one has more comments and votes.
- jason_slack 8y agoI have placed 106 Amazon orders in the last 6 months. Recently I have had more returns than normal. Why? The products I am receiving are broken or not as advertised or the quality is just very poor. I returned a screen protector because it just would not stick to the screen of my phone. I returned an iPad case because it wouldn't close all the way even though it was for my iPad size. I returned a laser pointer and goggles because I couldn't see the beam. I wonder too how much I am being penalized by Amazon's internal systems for these.
- kelchm 8y agoI have to wonder what the actual parameters are to end up being flagged in this way. I feel like I'm fairly liberal in returning things to Amazon and the painlessness of returns is really one of the primary motivators behind ordering from Amazon for me. I've purchased around 1700 items and spent around $56,000 at Amazon since 2006. Of those I've returned a total of 90 items.