Amazon Have Closed My Account

Tiber

I received an email from Amazon this morning advising that, " ... effective immediately, your Amazon account is closed and you are no longer able to shop with Amazon.co.uk.

Please know that any accounts related to this have also been closed ... do not make contact through the standard Customer Service channels again, as they will no longer be able to assist you".

This email was headed "Your Amazon.co.uk Enquiry".

The only enquiry I have made of Amazon was last week when I received a package from them that should have contained an Olympus XZ-1 but didn't. (As the outer packaging and labels were in perfect condition I can only assume that some light-fingered Amazon employee has the camera).

I telephoned them immediately and a replacement was issued and arrived the next morning. The cameraless box was returned to them last Monday.

I'm not really bothered about Amazon closing my account, what I am concerned about is that fact that I have a package here which is being collected by Yodel, (DHL as was), on Wednesday for return to Amazon for a refund.

Presumably they can't refuse to give me a refund. The Distance Selling regulations, as I understand them, allow me to return (almost) any goods for any reason.

Also, I purchased a new laptop and a Blu Ray recorder from Amazon yesterday, at a cost of £1,200 and they arrived this morning just before I received their email. I've a good mind to return these now and get them from Play.com or John Lewis.

The closure of my account means that I cannot even access my order records and the only point of contact with Amazon is via somebody called Sean "Spud" Murphy in Executive Customer Relations.

maninthestreet

Are you sure it wasn't a spoof email?

Tiber

maninthestreet wrote: »

Are you sure it wasn't a spoof email?

That did occur to me but it is genuine and my Amazon account is inaccessible.

Perhaps I should point out that Mr Murphy didn't actually sign himself "Spud"!

arcon5

On your first order you received an empty box?

I'm thinking they are a little suspicious of this and because of the high value purchases your making they are seeing you as a high risk. I'm not saying you have done anything wrong but this is how Amazon may see it perhaps....

visidigi

story doesnt add up, there's clearly something missing from it...

Elle7

Edit : Actually, the person above is probably right about it being due to you getting an empty box on your first (expensive) order.

mishkanorman

I agree, thats a lot of high end items to order straight after you've had one go missing !

sjbrun

The same thing happened to my friend with play.com - He bought some things and a lot turned out to be faulty. (however I got the feeling he had bought the same things previously which became faulty then he re-bought them from play.com so he could return them and keep a working one a bit fraudlent) I thnk they do this to protect themselves.

They dont want customers who return a lot of things or generally cost them too much money so they will block them from buying.

If you were in their shoes wouldn't you get a little suspecious?

visidigi

I don't see where the OP said the missing camera was their first order? Or what am I missing for that to be the case?

fluffnutter

Um, have you asked them why?

Tiber

This wasn't my first order from Amazon by any means. I've been using them for about eight years and have ordered all sorts of items.

The Olympus order - not exactly a high-end item at around £350, just a smaller camera to keep in my pocket - turned up perfectly packaged but missing the camera, the battery and the lens cap. (Oddly enough, whoever had helped themselves had left the little string thing that attaches the lens cap to the camera body).

Anyway, that was resolved by a replacement being received the next morning.

After further communication with Amazon it appears they have closed my account because I have returned too many items!

I was under the impression that as an on-line purchaser I could return what I liked for whatever reason. I've returned books that had grubby finger-prints all over the covers and one that had a torn cover. You know, the sort of things that if you picked them up in a shop you would put straight back on the shelf.

I returned a laptop once because although Amazon's site said it had a TV tuner it didn't but that was quite some time ago.

One thing that may have some bearing; I ordered a camera last December and that failed to turn up. Another was sent and that was just left on my doorstep without the postman even buzzing and I only discovered it when heading out for the day. As I live in a large house with eight others flats in it and people coming and going all the time I wasn't best pleased with Royal Mail that day.

Of course, Amazon are under no obligation whatsoever to sell to anybody if they don't want to and having searched Google I see that this account closure thing has happened to quite a few others.

Thanks for the comments, not really added anything to what I already knew, which is that under the Distance Selling rules you have a "seven day cooling off period" in which you can decide to return your purchases for any reason at all.

All my purchases were made by credit card so if the worst comes to the worst I'll pass it over to them as legally the goods are still theirs.