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Amazon locked out a seller's account because they changed their Kindle's profile name to "Daddy" (in Chinese). Amazon asked for the seller's ID with that new na

Amazon locked out a seller's account because they changed their Kindle's profile name to "Daddy" (in Chinese). Amazon asked for the seller's ID with that new name, and no amount of support escalation was enough to fix it[0]. It took an absurd amount of bad PR for them to come out and fix it. Google is bad, but Amazon is really just as bad. They both have absurd policies with no recourse, that work in the 80% case and fail very badly in the 20% left. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5gvgdl/using_a_amazon_kindle_fire_destroyed_my/ https://www.reddit.com/r/amazon/comments/5gvgdl/using_a_amaz...

saurik 8y ago
Amazon Web Services is essentially unrelated as a business from Amazon.com. This is even less relevant than someone trying to compare the policies of some random end-user service like Google Photos with Google Cloud Platform. I personally had serious issues (not account suspension problems, but an inability to get things like basic tax paperwork to correct addresses) with Amazon Flexible Payments (which was part of some seemingly unrelated-to-everyone division), but I count absolutely none of them against AWS (which wasn't involved in running the service).
- ikeboy 8y ago
  I once signed up for AWS, they couldn't verify the card on initial signup and the entire account got blocked, including a login to a seller account that was doing 6 figures/month. Amazon has a big issue in that all their services are linked to a single Amazon account, and if that account is blocked you can be prevented from accessing entirely unrelated services. In that case, maybe it was ok to suspend a brand new AWS account until accounts could be verified, but the linked accounts that were also blocked should have been looked at manually because of their volume.
  - rajacombinator 8y ago
    Yep I’ve also had absurd cross Amazon-AWS payment issues they were unable to fix for months. Their ultimate solution “uhhh make a new account.”
mrep 8y ago
> Google is bad, but Amazon is really just as bad. I think the main problem is that fraud is real problem and if you don't want your account to ever be considered fraudulent, then you should take ample steps to make sure that it is not. There are countless stories of people being careless with their keys causing tons of crypto-mining servers to launch. There is no win for cloud providers here. Either you get PR smashed for charging careless customers, pay tons of money to wave off their mistake, or get ridiculed for trying to block customers whom you think have been hacked.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Or just throttle the account and contact the customer by phone and help them resolve the issue. If you can’t provide that level of support you don’t deserve my business.

saurik 8y ago

Amazon Web Services is essentially unrelated as a business from Amazon.com. This is even less relevant than someone trying to compare the policies of some random end-user service like Google Photos with Google Cloud Platform. I personally had serious issues (not account suspension problems, but an inability to get things like basic tax paperwork to correct addresses) with Amazon Flexible Payments (which was part of some seemingly unrelated-to-everyone division), but I count absolutely none of them against AWS (which wasn't involved in running the service).

ikeboy 8y ago
I once signed up for AWS, they couldn't verify the card on initial signup and the entire account got blocked, including a login to a seller account that was doing 6 figures/month. Amazon has a big issue in that all their services are linked to a single Amazon account, and if that account is blocked you can be prevented from accessing entirely unrelated services. In that case, maybe it was ok to suspend a brand new AWS account until accounts could be verified, but the linked accounts that were also blocked should have been looked at manually because of their volume.
- rajacombinator 8y ago
  Yep I’ve also had absurd cross Amazon-AWS payment issues they were unable to fix for months. Their ultimate solution “uhhh make a new account.”

mrep 8y ago

> Google is bad, but Amazon is really just as bad. I think the main problem is that fraud is real problem and if you don't want your account to ever be considered fraudulent, then you should take ample steps to make sure that it is not. There are countless stories of people being careless with their keys causing tons of crypto-mining servers to launch. There is no win for cloud providers here. Either you get PR smashed for charging careless customers, pay tons of money to wave off their mistake, or get ridiculed for trying to block customers whom you think have been hacked.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
Or just throttle the account and contact the customer by phone and help them resolve the issue. If you can’t provide that level of support you don’t deserve my business.