Amazon Prime has charged me twice - sometimes three times

alyssadrysdale

Hi all,

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas/time off.

I was scrolling through my online banking transactions and I noticed that were two payments of £8.99 taken every month. Usually one at the beginning and one at the end of the month. I found this rather odd and it was not until I was scrolling down further that I noticed that in March and October, respectively, there were three charges taken out. One at the beginning of the month and the other two were right after each other at the end of the month. 

I contacted Amazon Customer Service and they said that my card was linked to two accounts - had some digging around and for some reason, it looked like there was another Prime account - do not remember setting this up and would not set it up as I already have an account.

However, that does not explain the three payments coming out and sometimes there was only one payment coming out.

I was told to speak to my bank about it and I think I will. Has this happened to anyone else before?

DullGreyGuy

Certainly having multiple accounts will have happened to lots of people. These sorts of fees are designed to be small and easily missable so if you forget you've an account its easy to setup another. 

The other one is that Prime is country specific and have known people  sign up to prime in another country when on holiday/business etc and then get two charges but then the values are normally different due to FX etc

It'd be easier to see a list of payments and dates but if you are getting 3 payments one month and only 1 the next etc you are averaging 2 per month and so just seems a timing thing.

saajan_12

Can you log into the 2 Prime accounts under the 2 respective email addresses and check the payment history there? The 3rd payment may be a catch up if one of them was unpaid in another month (ie you only had 1 pmt from your bank). 

Also check the 2 email accounts, to see if you got a confirmation of the account opening in each. 

Of course try to close one of them to stop the bleeding. Then see if you can appeal to Amazon to refund (some of) the charges for 1 account on the basis it was a mistake and you haven't used it. 

MalMonroe

Hi, has your amazon account been hacked into and someone else is using your amazon prime at your expense? Some hackers are very clever and able to do that kind of thing.

I think it all sounds weird because if you try to set up another account, amazon usually advises that you already have such an account and won't let you open another one. I don't understand why an amazon customer adviser would say that one card is linked to two accounts as they don't usually allow that to happen.

I think you should complain to amazon because they seem to have mis-handled your account altogether and ask them to refund your money. Also ask for compensation because of the stress caused. (May or may not be successful).

I'm surprised that nobody at amazon suggested that you should change all your passwords and set up a two-step identification login process, which they did to me when my amazon account was hacked. In fact they closed my account and sent me an email to tell me I needed to contact them to find out why they'd done that. Someone in another country had accessed my account - fortunately not spent any of my money as they were stopped but it's scary to think that anybody can just access your account. 

Amazon need to sort this out for you and refund you the money you've overpaid. It's not your bank at fault here, it's amazon. 

And also, tighten up the security for your amazon accounts. That stopped mine being hacked into. So far.