Amazon restricted my account and will not refund gift card balance of £200. Totally blindsided. Any advice??

I got banned from returning kindle books as I tried to return too many. Had to do a live chat to tell them what had happened (I had accidentally bought a box set of 8, instead of just one)

I think delivery drivers being allmover the place, English is not always their first language so reading your additional information where to leave and not leave parcels could get confusion.
for example mine says “please leave in porch, if locked call this number”
although I have had parcels marked as delivered and not in my porch or outside it, there’s been times parcels been delivered to another house according to the picture but as I don’t know whose house it is I’ve had them resend or refunded. Many of my parcels arrive damaged to and I’m quick to complain to Amazon and the courier company about this to ensure things are packed better and delivery drivers aren’t just throwing parcels over the fence. The horror when I opened a box of two 1kg Nutella jars wrapped in bubble wrap but still seemed to get smashed! Amazon kindly resent them

Can you challenge them on this though, say if your parcel went missing and you could prove from the picture that it wasn't left in the safe space you specifically requested?

The T&Cs don’t trump UK legislation.

They can refund the money to the original gift giver if they’re going to be sticklers over money laundering requirements. Even there, the authorities wouldn’t do anything about a one-off very low level amount transaction to somebody presumably not on any watchlists.

What they can’t do is steal the funds.

She didn't buy them. That's a huge part of the problem. She isn't entitled to a refund - check the T&Cs of any gift card for just about anything.

They will let her use her gift card balance, just not on physical goods that might go missing. I know that leaves few options, but they are not withholding the funds entirely.

Hopefully OP can get through to a person and have the account reinstated, perhaps by agreeing to set her delivery default to a locker so that she doesn't have another missing parcel from forgetting to change the delivery address.

Amazon are not the only company to pull this type of stunt. I've seen various threads on here about people who have had their Vinted account closed for supposedly dodgy activity and they can't get their credit balance back.

They are not going to put cash in the ops bank account

Then they need to let her use the card. And they can’t restrict its use over and above the terms she bought it under.

The only way the gift card money would possibly be given back would be direct to the card that purchased the gift cards so her work or maybe actual physical gift cards.

They are not going to put cash in the ops bank account.

Quite. The gift card balance is OP’s property. It isn’t Amazon’s. They can’t just steal it from her to offset their losses caused by delivery incompetence, even if they are sure she’s stealing from them. If they want recompense from OP, they need to pursue her through a court, or report her to the police for fraud/theft.

Their customer service do, on occasion, act as though they can rely on the legal framework in the US, rather than here. I once had to pull them upon on their language when they spoke about ‘on this occasion’ they would allow me to return an item ‘as a matter of goodwill’, when the goods were clearly faulty. Er, no, I think you’ll find this matter is clearly covered by the law in the UK, and you can write your T&Cs in breach of that all you like, but the legal framework in the UK will trump your own self-serving small print every time, if it isn’t congruent with the law. Chancers.

I'm not "suggesting", it's factual.

Ops account has been restricted due to suspicious activity. She also isn't the buyer of the gift cards. Sending her cash in lieu of those is outwith the T&Cs of almost every gift card I can think off, but would also likely put Amazon in breach of money laundering rules.

What???? They hold her money and you are suggesting they have no business obligation to allow her to use it or refund it to her? What kind of retailer scam is that?

No. It is the retailer’s responsibility to use proper delivery people. It’s not on the purchaser. If one lives in a block of flats and there have been explicit instructions not to leave things in the foyer and the delivery drivers still do then that’s on the delivery service.

the OP says recently there have been a cluster of returns due to valid reasons. This can happen. After 20 years of good customer behaviour, a cluster of legitimate returns like damaged on arrival or wrong item sent or even a few chanted mind does not mean the customer is in any way ‘irresponsible’ so there is no responsibility the OP should be accepting.
Amazon service has gone downhill. They are terrible employers and errors are much more frequent. That’s not the OP or any customer’s responsibility. That’s on Amazon. As for the gift card

not RTFT so sorry if this is duplicating what someone else has said but you can’t use an Amazon gift card balance to buy other gift cards (unless they’ve changed it recently) - I had an Amazon voucher from buying an insurance policy and was going to get a different voucher through Amazon and it insisted on using a bank card instead

Mine sometimes brazenly take a photo of my parcels sat on the doorstep in full view of the road.

instructions ALWAYS say leave in the front porch which is never locked.

we also have a ring doorbell.

whyyyyyyy??

At our old address we frequently used to have items left on the front doorstep, with the requested safe place being ignored, and most times the delivery info would state “handed to resident” which was a complete lie and there was never a photo.

Since moving we’ve found that Amazon couriers don’t deliver to our immediate area, although they deliver nearby. I think being on a new build estate our address isn’t yet recognised by their system, so most things are delivered by Royal Mail who deliver small items in the morning and larger things in the afternoon or evening. If you happen to place an order for two or more things which are packaged separately that means you may get two separate deliveries, size depending. They also use Evri.
It’s less than ideal as we can’t now choose a designated day for deliveries to come together which is a nuisance and neither can we have same day or next day by 1pm deliveries which we could do at our last address.

You do realise that we’re trying to give the OP some data points as to what Amazon might consider a normal/“acceptable” level of parcel theft? Not just saying “oh that’s never happened to me”.

🙄yourself.

I’ve just checked my last few orders and there are photos of parcels in my letter box which I assume will also be location tracked on the gps. Or behind my bins if I’ve answered my doorbell when I’m not in.

But do the drivers not have to take a photo to prove they have left it somewhere, which presumably should match where the customer has asked them to leave it?

Can you gift the gift card to another account at least?
Maybe if so you can send to a friend who can reimburse you?

Well, maybe they don't. Is it that weird for someone to not have their parcels go missing?

We’ve had a lot of problems this last two weeks with deliveries being dumped and no attempt to use the doorbell. It was one large order that got split by Amazon afterwards so we could not make a change to delivery instructions. Amazon CS did it for me yet the drivers still ignored them.
I changed the last order to a collection pick up and still had problems! Not at all confident using them again yet - the last order was bin bags so not exactly desirable nor expensive