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Ask HN: Amazon locked my account and demands copy of my billing statement?
I tried to buy a Macbook Pro on sale two days ago from Amazon USA. Ten minutes later, I get an email saying my account is “on hold” (full message pasted below) to verify that I am the “authorized owner of the payment method”, and requiring me to upload a copy of my billing statement. This seems like an unorthodox process, and from a privacy perspective it seems deleterious for me to send that type of information?
Further, it is trivial to modify a PDF billing statement, so it seems like unreliable proof of anything. Amazon says the hold is “for my protection”, but aren’t I already protected by my credit card and bank for unauthorized transactions? So what is the purpose and process of this verification?
Also, my account has several hundred dollars of gift card credit that I've been using for purchases, including necessities like groceries, and that is inaccessible when it is locked.
This experience is eliciting some deja vu from prior posts on HN about people getting locked out of their Apple ID or Google accounts. It seems like despite massive fintech fundings and innovation, online payments is still not a fully solved problem, if situations like this are still occurring? If, for instance, I paid with crypto, merchants probably wouldn’t care much because the transaction is irreversible?
(If any Amazon people see this, I would be grateful for help looking into this and getting my account unlocked as soon as possible. My contact info is on my HN profile. No response from the executive contacts (found on https://www.elliott.org/company-contacts/amazon) so far.)
Original email from Amazon:
Hello,
We have detected unusual payment activity on your Amazon account. For your protection, we have placed your account on hold temporarily and placed any pending orders or subscriptions on hold as well.
If we are unable to confirm your payment information within 72 hours, your pending orders will be canceled. Your account will remain on hold until we are able to confirm that you are the authorized owner of the payment method used in the recent transaction.
To restore access to your account, sign in to your Amazon US store account and follow the on-screen instructions. Once you have provided the required information, we will review it and respond within 24 hours.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Account Specialist
Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com
================
- shyn3 4y agoOnce I found out if you reset your password on Amazon you lose your order history, I decided to not give them my money.
- hnthrow234 4y agoWhen things like this happen it is a wake-up call to diversify which companies you patronize. But the sheer scale of some like Amazon makes that difficult. For instance, if you buy groceries from Amazon-owned Whole Foods, to order for pickup or delivery, you need to do so through your Amazon account. So if something happens to that account, you would have to scramble and find a new solution for a basic necessity like groceries. Back in the days of the corner store merchant, they weren't going to just ban you arbitrarily from the store. And if even they did, you could just go to the next corner. What we're dealing with today is a much different reality.
- anamax 4y ago> For instance, if you buy groceries from Amazon-owned Whole Foods then maybe you should switch. Whole Foods is almost never the only option in a given area, even if you want delivery.
- hnthrow234 4y agoThat's true. Though there's probably only one or two other options in any given area. Like you might have the Whole Foods, the regional Safeway/Kroger/Publix type of store, and a Costco maybe. And among those stores the product selection actually can differ a lot.
- version_five 4y ago> online payments is still not a fully solved problem It's solved, they just don't care about you. Amazon is the most consumer hostile company (other than possibly uber) in recent memory. I've given up on them too for their nonstop attempts to screw me with dark patterns. They actually have an awesome distribution system, but instead of using it to their advantage, they'd rather spend their time scamming people. Just buy your stuff elsewhere and move on.
- hnthrow234 4y ago> they just don't care about you That's probably true, and it is a deeply unpleasant feeling. It seems like a binary customer experience: everything goes swimmingly, and that's great and you happily ingratiate yourself to the company, and then it doesn't, and it's very bad, but the company now has all the leverage and they can do whatever they want. The customer has no recourse, on an individual basis, with no collective power. Who is going to help, the regulator? Probably not in any impactful or timely fashion. At least with financial entities, the CFPB actually has teeth.
- version_five 4y ago> It seems like a binary customer experience I agree. This is a side effect of automation. You are either part of the 80% the process is optimized for, or you're an edge case that nobody cares about because you're outside the cost/benefit calculation. I hate it too, but I think the only recourse is not to buy from places that behave this way.
- hnthrow234 4y agoAbsolutely an algorithmic issue and your comment about edge cases is spot on. But when the algorithm flags an edge case, whatever happened to manual review by a human? In this case, any human looking at this transaction would have found nothing unusual. I'm pretty sure there is a Black Mirror episode where someone ends up becoming an "edge case" and it all goes downhill from there. I haven't actually watched it but have read about it referenced in many similar contexts so maybe someone knows the actual episode.
- tamaharbor 4y agoAmazon is another of those things that used to be good but now it’s not. I have had extremely good experiences with Walmart+ as a replacement.
- hnthrow234 4y agoAny anecdotes? Or just generally it has been good? Do you get groceries from Walmart+?
- Irongirl1 4y agoPlease do NOT do this. Walmart+ is awful. Our very first delivery was mixed up with another customer's order and we were refused a refund for the stuff we ordered that they refused to deliver. I had to complain to the BBB and the case was transferred to CA, where Walmart based their delivery division, even though Wal-Mart is based in Arkansas. We were in a bit of difficulty...only one driver in our house and he wasn't feeling too tasty, our dog was out of food and we needed a few basics. So we tried again...they simply refused to show up and cancelled our order without telling us. It took two weeks to get our money back and a lot of very bad phone calls. Never, never use these people. I'm not sure if the ee's are scamming them and their customers or what the problem is but our experiences have been exceedingly bad.
- dessant 4y agoIn case you decide to upload a billing statement on Amazon, do not send it as a text PDF, but export the document to an image and convert it to PDF. Their systems appear to have trouble parsing text in a PDF and you may receive an automated rejection, while images are processed without issues. I've had the same issue with my account and I have found this solution on the web after several automated rejections and failed attempts to contact Amazon.