Don't have Amazon Prime? Students can get a
free 6-Month Amazon Prime trial with free 2-day shipping, unlimited video streaming & more.
If you're not a student, there's also a
free 1-Month Amazon Prime trial available.
You can also earn cash back rewards on Amazon and Whole Foods purchases with the
Amazon Prime Visa credit card. Read our review to see if it’s the right card for you.
292 Comments
Your comment cannot be blank.
Featured Comments
Think of it this way. Amazon wants to maximize profits. It makes no business sense to ban people from using your service. It's not just "if you return too many items, you get banned." Amazon has top engineers working out algorithms to fight retail fraud.
For example, you return a baseball glove because "it wasn't as advertised". They automatically cross-check that with the other returns for that item and compare it with the percentage that said it "wasn't as advertised". If you keep returning products over and over that don't often get returned, you build a pattern that the analysts use to predict fraud.
Mostly though, the people who get banned are buying high ticket items and using Amazon as a rental service. I know of one photographer who was buying expensive lenses for gigs ($700-$2000 each) and returning them after the event. His pattern was spotted and then, yes "he was banned for returning too much stuff".
Another example were people buying counterfeit items on Aliexpress and Wish, then buying the genuine item on Amazon, swapping them and returning the fake one to Amazon for a full refund. Then they'd sell the real one on eBay. Again, these commonly counterfeited items are inspected at the return center (more thoroughly than say, the baseball glove). If you return a counterfeit item, they will log it internally. They might ban you right then or they may wait. You might think you tricked them and they didn't know, but chances are they know. Amazon logged the fact that you scammed them, but elected not to take action. (Because again, it's not in Amazon's interest to ban customers) But If you do enough shady stuff, you'll eventually trip the threshold and lose your account.
It doesn't make sense to continue a business relationship with customers that lose them money, but it is NOT in Amazon's interest to stop people from using their service. And if you aren't committing return fraud, you have no reason to be concerned at all.
However if you are buying items knowing full well that you're going to use them and then send them back, that's fraud. If you do it often or on a bunch of high ticket items, you'll get caught and banned.
For example, the guy with the lenses is someone I actually know. After he got banned, they enacted some kind of rule that blacklisted his address and his IP to spot new accounts. He's persona non grata from Amazon and you have no idea how much that sucks.
So he tried to get his account back by bitching and moaning on social media about being "unfairly terminated for making too many returns" and said that he returned "only 11 of his 600+ amazon orders". And yes that's true, but he conveniently left out that those 11 returned orders were high priced lenses. So don't believe everything you read on Twitter either.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
If they blacklist you, kiss your camera goodbye.
Also, hardware is VERY good on this device, but the software that controls it is piss-poor
If they blacklist you, kiss your camera goodbye.
Also, hardware is VERY good on this device, but the software that controls it is piss-poor
If they blacklist you, kiss your camera goodbye.
Also, hardware is VERY good on this device, but the software that controls it is piss-poor
What are the grounds for getting blacklisted?
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.