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

Sounds stressful.

You could just stop ordering from Amazon? Do other delivery companies do better?

What are the things you can’t get elsewhere?

It’s so MNs that you get responses like “my parcels never go missing”, etc 🙄

I’m intrigued too, I can find everything elsewhere & sometimes it’s cheaper

If I had 1 item gone missing I'd have switched to a locker. How come you didn't switch to a locker sooner as clearly the entrance to a block of flats isn't safe?

I imagine the decision was made by an AI. It's hard to argue with an AI unless you find the right trigger words.

Couldn't you just resign yourself to life without Amazon?I haven't used it for 15 years. There are better options out there.

Is it possible to collect parcels from the Post Office?

It shocks and sickens me that people get deliveries 5/7 days a week!! What the hell are you buying?!

Why not at least choose the option to have one fixed delivery day and save on packing and the environmental impact of such frequent deliveries

Honestly I despair

I had a very bad experience with an Amazon delivery just this week. I stayed near door for several hours so I could answer the delivery asap. When he rang the bell I took less than a minute to answer on the intercom of my flat - I had to buzz him into building - but he had gone before I got there -then had message that delivery attempted but I was out!. I phoned Amazon a told them I was not out and he had not waited to be let in. They took my phone number and gave it to the man. He then phoned me - shouting at me - saying he had waited 5 minutes. Not true!. He then came back and was very rude on the intercom/entrance phone - but I let him in building. It was alcohol - which I was supposed to sign for - but he just left it on ground floor. We do have lift.

Why sickened? Not everyone lives in a town where they can pop to a shop on foot.

If I need things for my family and pets that can't wait a week, and the alternative is driving a 30 mile round trip to the nearest town, why would I not get them delivered on the offered delivery option that I pay a subscription for?

The van is coming to my rural road every day anyway, so surely it is better for the environment to use the service than adding another vehicle to the roads?

I tried Amazon Day delivery, although usually select No-Rush delivery. They generally come the next day anyway 🤷‍♀️.

Did you mean to type that you took less than a minute to answer the door/ intercom? I really don’t think you can expect a delivery driver to wait for a minute for an answer!

In fairness I had a period where at least 50% of my parcels were delivered to the wrong place (I never found out where) despite multiple calls, emails, other Amazon drivers moving the ‘circle’ to tell Amazon where I actually live etc. This went on for at least 6 months and still happens occasionally 2 years on. New build estate and Amazon kept putting the ‘circle’ (the delivery location) in the wrong place. It absolutely blew my mind the level of incompetence, especially as some parcels were delivered.

The drivers were going to the circle area and not checking that it matched the actual address, then picking a random house within that area to dump my parcel. It was crazy!

Royal Mail, Evri etc never had an issue with my address, it was very specifically Amazon

Amazing are usually so good with customer service too

Write to the consumer journalist at The Guardian because once firms are mentioned they usually compensate by way of a financial incentive as they don't like being shown in a bad way or contact Rip Off Britain with you looking sad that they won't let you spend a voucher that was a present.

what are you buying? Maybe they have done you a favour. You sound like you have a shopping addiction

And what exactly do you hope to achieve by firing off a quick judgey comment to a single individual on mumsnet?

When huge companies like Amazon are offering this service, which is cheap and easy, then of course people will use it.

Many people struggle with organisation and will not plan ahead in order to have one delivery per week when quick, convenient, cheap options are offered. That is simply how people are, and you're not exactly going to change that with knee jerk accusatory and unpleasant comments on here.

Amazon dominate the market and make it too easy, using exploitation and dodgy ethical practices to make things extremely cheap and fast.

Maybe take up the issue with Amazon or your MP, rather than venting at individual consumers.

I think if I’d have received an email
warning about account conduct I would not be making anymore missing parcel refund requests unless I wanted to lose my account. I would have just lost the £9.99 and reordered.

If someone has so many problems with Amazon deliveries, why keep ordering to the same address? We get several a week, even several within a day. Mostly ordered by my DH for his company and we rarely have any go missing. Occasionally some have been left behind a wall in our front garden which isn't ideal but if the service was unreliable/ generally no one was home to answer the front door, we wouldn't keep doing the same thing over and over again. It sounds like OP has pushed their luck too far.

I suspect if you go through the appeals process you’ll get your account back eventually but surely you must see businesses don’t get as big as Amazon have by allowing “bad” customers to continue with such a high rate of missing or returned custom? It just makes no business sense.

If you get back in, always choose the locker option and only order if you’re pretty sure of fit, quality etc.

🤣 I have do date a few that never arrived. No issues with refunds. I had one that was delivered - but to the wrong address. The driver took a picture of the parcel at my front door. Exept it wasn't. Had to go to some lengths to prove otherwise.

I send quite a few items back... maybe every 4-6 weeks, the majority is shoes/ clothes. (Sometimes they just refund & don't bother with a return, which is annoying.)
I think it's about the value of the items that go missing. They also know the lengths some customers go to in order to get a refund...

I would try to speak to a human on the chat function, you have to go through loads of faffing to get to that point as they try to make bots deal with everything.
Ive found that when I’ve had issues the humans are always more than happy to help and usually offer up a refund or further support when it’s very much ‘computer says no’ with the bot.

You won’t get the gift card money sent to you because of money laundering. Just use it up on digital purchases.

OP won't get a better or more helpful response than this.

Easier said than done. I live in a remote area with limited options. Some companies won't deliver here and if they do it often takes longer for things to arrive, typically a week longer. This is because the courier companies subcontract it to small local delivery services. Amazon send most of their stuff via Royal Mail which is very reliable here. We can't get next day delivery but most things will be delivered in less than a week.

I'd happily use another company if I could rely on them sending stuff via Royal Mail but it's not always easy to tell which delivery service will be used. Sometimes Amazon is the only practical option. To give an example, a while ago I needed to get my hands on a mobile phone quickly but I couldn't get one anywhere locally. The nearest place to buy one was a 7 hour round trip away.

That's interesting, thank you? Is there a set value or number of returns or is it proportional to the account turnover?

DP does some work that is paid in Amazon vouchers and there is always a substantial balance on the account. As a result we buy a lot through Amazon, and do sometimes do returns. Only once had somehting not turn up and that actually came through Royal Mail, the empty box arrived in a bag appologising for the "damage".

Anyway, there are a number of returns on the account but only a small percentage of the transactions. Does that put his account at risk. I'm worried about accumulating a big balance and losing it now!