This is just a fracture of the Amazon suspensions chapter and how to avoid them. This article’s purpose is to present some not-so-popular (but most likely important) tips on how to prevent Amazon locks and some steps based on their protocol, on how to reinstate them:
Prevent:
- If after a Gift Card payment, your status shows as “Pending” for more than 5 minutes, pay close attention to it. If it doesn’t change within 5 hours (top 6), then cancel all order/s related to this payment. Then try again after a few days.
- Lately, there has been reported higher chance of amazon locks because of GC purchase of: Expensive products (more than e.g. $100), and/or these types: Adult Items/Supplements, Portable Electronic/High end Devices. Instead buy them with your credit card.
- Amazon USA is more offensive lately. Amazon UK/DE/FR currently works much better.
- Amazon seems to have added some anti-fraud measures that resemble to these of eBay’s anti-stealth measures. Its algorithm now seems to be taking into consideration behavioural patterns such as normal browsing, collecting cookies and purchase habits/types/consistency. So avoid e.g. creating an account and start placing orders at day one without browsing, and/or make a purchase of $500, while you used to buy $20 stuff.
- Do not use another person’s card for your purchases. This was feasible in the past, but now it’s risky. It could also cause trouble when trying to reinstate.
- If you have set it for Prime auto-renewal, make sure you always have the amount needed to be retracted.
Reinstate:
Amazon is not eBay. Human factor/moods is less present here. So don’t put much hope on this. Additionally If there are any discrepancies, Amazon will most probably not be “spared” to you or something, you will more likely lose. On the other hand, if you have everything correct, there are high chances you will succeed. So in this case, do not give up too soon!
A usual example of the protocol Amazon follows and what to do: Amazon can lock you without even sending an email. And even if they do and you follow their instructions replying to the email with any credentials needed etc, it usually says that they will update of the situation (within 24-48 hours), but many times they don’t. In this case, you should persist: Contact them in chat support via another Amazon Account or call them. But do not waste much time with CS agents. Even if they tell you that someone will contact you via email within the next hours, there is again, a high chance they won’t. Instead, ask to speak to an account specialist/manager or supervisor. If they don’t agree to forward you, they will tell you that someone will contact you within hours. Then do as they say and wait. If you don’t receive the email by that time, contact them again and this time tell them that you have been waiting but nobody contacted you and that’s why you now want to reach a supervisor or an account manager. This time they will connect you; so now you have some chances for reinstate after investigation.
If everything fails, you can always contact Bezos’s team at the well-know email, or first give it a try sending an email of what happened at Amazon Executive Customer Relations: ecr-replies@amazon.com
There are more emails and phones now that we can use