Amazon's flexible return policy may not be as risk free as you think.
The company bans shoppers for violations, which include returning items too often, according to The Wall Street Journal. Some users aren't told what they did wrong.
Amazon boasts free and easy returns for several of its items, which has pushed many brick-and-mortar stores to offer the same policies as they struggle to compete with the e-commerce giant. But it turns out Amazon's return policies may come at a price.
Dozens of people have taken to Twitter and Facebook to complain about Amazon closing their accounts without warning or an explanation, according to the Journal.
Paul Fidalgo wrote about being "exiled" from Amazon for "excessive returns." Other people noted they had also been banned from the site for similar reasons.
One customer tweeted a screenshot of an email from Amazon asking her to explain why she returned her orders.
@amazon - wow, great customer service, so personal and caring! Do u even read my return reasons (like 6 purchases in the last year...and that’s too many?) and a replacement for something I NEVER rec’d. #BadCustomerExperience #onlineshopping #Horrible #ShopLocal #BoycottAmazon pic.twitter.com/2DY1qHmFka — Claire Bochner (@cmbochner) April 17, 2018
Shoppers have for years complained about being banned from Amazon. One customer told the Guardian in 2016 that he was kicked off Amazon after sending back 37 of 343 purchases. And last month, Amazon Prime members took to social media to share that their accounts had been closed without explanation, with some threatening a class-action lawsuit against the company.
Amazon's return policy doesn't tell customers that returning too many items can get them kicked out, but its conditions of use say the company reserves the right to terminate accounts at its discretion.
"We want everyone to be able to use Amazon, but there are rare occasions where someone abuses our service over an extended period of time," an Amazon representative said. "We never take these decisions lightly, but with over 300 million customers around the world, we take action when appropriate to protect the experience for all our customers. If a customer believes we've made an error, we encourage them to contact us directly so we can review their account and take appropriate action."
First published May 22 at 3:34 p.m. PT
Update, 5:38 p.m.: Adds comment from Amazon.
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epidemica on May 23rd, 2018 at 04:40 UTC »
A lot of other retailers do this as well. Best Buy and Walmart track returns (even with a receipt) and will ban you from returning items after you hit a certain amount.
I purchased a TV from Best Buy, it didn't fit on the mount I had, so I returned it and bought a different one. That TV was defective out of the box new, so I had to exchange it for another TV (different model, other was sold out) and that receipt came with a disclaimer on it saying I had one return left until some date, and after that return, I would no longer be allowed to return any items to the store.
beepborpimajorp on May 23rd, 2018 at 01:34 UTC »
What's the threshold on this? Before I get too angry I'd like to see what that is, because I'm not going to trust random angry people on the internet who claim they've done nothing wrong. If anyone else hangs around the gaming community and listens to people who claim to be 'wrongfully banned' you'll understand where I'm coming from.
I've returned several items to amazon. Some shampoo for being out of date, a bag of dog food that was torn open in the box, and when Fresh was still delivering here there was a real issue with my orders showing up missing stuff or just not arriving at all. Like 6 out of 8 times they had to refund me for Fresh stuff.
But all those things were verifiable issues. I had pics that I provided, and in the case of the Fresh stuff they checked with their local delivery company and found out that it was the delivery company that lost all my stuff. (Unsurprisingly they stopped offering Fresh after like 6 months, prob cause they were sick of dealing with a terrible delivery company.)
In all I'd say that (outside of the Fresh disaster) I make returns at least once or twice a year and I have prime. And I haven't run into any issues at all. But everything I got a refund for I had documentation that it was busted beyond repair, expired, etc. because some of the individual sellers on Amazon are scam-artists. I try my hardest not to buy anything that isn't sold directly by Amazon because my experience with the sellers on there is where almost all of my returns have come from.
fuck_im_dead on May 23rd, 2018 at 01:14 UTC »
Maybe amazon can start banning sellers who sell things that are defective, sized wrong, damaged due to poor packaging, missing parts, outright fakes, and other scammy shit on there. I used to never return anything, I find myself having to return about 10 percent of my purchases lately.