The how to guide to getting banned at Amazon

[rdodolak]

Alright, almost everyone is chomping at the bit to know what you need to do to get a lifetime ban from Amazon. Well now you know.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compa...cid=spartanntp

Originally Posted by MarketWatch

By Barbara Kollmeyer

Want to get banned from shopping at Amazon? Do this

Making a habit of returning unwanted items to Amazon.com appears to have a hidden cost: a lifetime ban.

Case in point: Greg Nelson, who returned 37 items and apparently found himself barred from shopping at Amazon, according to an article published Friday in the Guardian. The computer programmer, described in the Guardian story as a “self-confessed Amazon addict,” said he has bought 343 items in total.

Nelson reportedly maintained that the items he returned were faulty or damaged or fell short of their descriptions but said Amazon hasn’t given him a chance to explain. He said he was told he has lost his unspent gift-card balance, as it cannot be transferred.

“I could understand if there were evidence that I had somehow tried to abuse the system, but I haven’t,” Nelson told the newspaper, adding that he’s been a loyal customer of Amazon’s since 2002.

In a form letter, Amazon refused to reopen his account. In a statement to MarketWatch, the company said: “In a tiny fraction of cases we are forced to close accounts where we identify extreme account abuse. This decision is only taken after we have reviewed the account carefully and tried to work with the customer over an extended time period to resolve any issues.”

What’s the policy on returns?

As the Guardian pointed out, nowhere in Amazon’s return policy does it speak of the risk that a customer might be blacklisted for initiating too many returns. There is an entire section on returns and refunds, how to do them, returning gifts and return policies under every category of goods that Amazon offers. The Guardian said Amazon refused to divulge how many returns get a customer banned.

Personal-finance news site MoneyTalksNews referenced Amazon’s apparently unspoken policy of banning repeat returners in a February 2015 article, and it mentioned other retailers that track returns to determine whether individuals are abusing their return policies. Such tracking was also addressed in an article in DailyTech in 2013.

But retailers have also their share of complaints about the money drain that can result from customers who overuse return policies. According to a survey by IHL Group in May 2015, retailers worldwide lose around $1.75 trillion annually from the cost of items that are overstocked or out of stock and from what they referred to as “needless returns.” The survey said those three factors can mean up to 1.7% in lost revenue for the majority of retailers.

Outdoor-sports-gear maker REI Inc. reined in its no-questions-asked returns policy in 2013, allowing returns for items only within a year of purchase. REI said it had had problems with large numbers of returns from a “small group of members,” according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited one customer who returned a backpack he had bought in 2004 because “it was getting old and dirty and I didn’t like it anymore.”

The Guardian said that it had heard from more than 200 readers in response to its Amazon story and that in some cases a high return rate doesn’t appear to have affected shoppers’ access to the website. A reader identified as OldJacobi said returning 10 out of 139 items — a return rate of just over 7%, compared with Nelson’s reported 11% — hasn’t earned a ban.

Bans on repeat returners, though, appear to be anything but a new development. Google “Amazon ban” and plenty of discussions and individual cases appear, dating as far back as 2008, detailed on such sites as MacRumors.

Tuan Do, the founder and chief executive officer of technology news website TechWalls, shared his experience of a temporary ban from Amazon in a post on Monday. He said he received a warning letter after returning two or three items over a two-month span: “We’re writing to apologize for the number of issues you’ve experienced with your shipments. Your correspondences with us indicate you’ve required refunds on a majority of orders for a number of reasons,” said the letter.

In an update, Do said his account and that of his wife was subsequently canceled after she returned a bicycle purchased in her account.

“All open orders were canceled, I just could access digital content purchased in the account. I had over $100 in my gift card balance and Amazon agreed to send me the refund, I received a check in my mailbox after 1 week,” wrote Do, who calculated that his rate of return for Amazon is about 17% — ordering 104 items and returning 18.

Ultimately, he said, the account was reopened after he sent a letter to an Amazon account specialist pleading his case. Several readers responded with “banned” stories of their own, along with some sellers who complained of the difficulty of dealing with repeat returners.