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

Yes I've started using Amazon by preference because I find their deliveries are reliable. Many other online retailers use Evri and I never seem to actually receive anything from them. They always say they haven't been able to deliver after 2 attempts and return it, even when we were all in.

I'll use other companies if I know they're going to use Royal Mail, but often they don't specify and it will turn out to be Evri.

I assume it's the case that (due to poor pay and conditions) Amazon have trouble recruiting good delivery personnel. That's why so many of their staff just dump packages at various locations which are no where near the front door of the intended recipient?

If your parcels keep getting stolen why keep ordering anyway?

Basically you are costing them money and they are entitled to chose who they want as their customers.

As for the gift card, if you purchased it with your own money I would push for them to refund it via their complaint process.

Otherwise, spend it on Kindle Books, films etc over the next year or so.

A poster asked what digital purchase are.

Digital purchases are the likes of e-books and streamed films or music products from Netflix etc. Obviously they cant go "missing" because they are not delivered in physical form.

I only had one missing item from Amazon in 15 years. It was a £5 wire stripper.I asked for a replacement. The original turned up a week later. They told me to keep it. Who needs 2 wire strippers?

Dh had a similar thing happen and escalated it to Customer Support, Head Office in London - wrote an actual letter, detailing exactly how the problem had arisen, with reference numbers etc. It was resolved fairly quickly, and satisfactorily in the end. The address is Amazon Corporate Office, LHR16, 1 Principal Place, London, EC2A 2FA.

This advice on Google -
Executive and Direct Emails

• Managing Director: Email [email protected]. This goes to a high-level support team, but they normally expect you to have an existing customer service case ID first.
• Executive Relations: Some UK consumers have success emailing executive customer support at [email protected] or [email protected].

OT but (as I’m sure you realise) they would just chuck it if sent back to them which is why they didn’t want it back.

I’ve had that a few times over the years with smaller items, eg a book my children already had (my fault), a game of Top Trumps where they inexplicably sent me the German version. Both times they said no need to send them back.

I get that but ultimately they have decided they don't want your custom which they are entitled to do.

It's not your fault I know but I doubt there's anything you can do.

Its a percentage of order volume and order value versus the volume of refund requests.

So say 3 x 10£ orders placed in entire amazon history. 4th 10£ doesnt arrive. Refund requested , no issue.

4th order is an apple iPhone pro , triggers concession abuse.

Or

100 orders placed every month, 33% returned will trigger as you shouldn't have that many return needs and could suggest you are a seller bypassing setting up a seller account. This likelihood increases if you have more than 15 addresses on your account as it suggests you are selling through amazon and pretending they are orders.

Again , high gc balance and constant delivered not received will flag.

Algorithms are not infallible and its likely if OP reaches out properly that this will be over turned.

Often it costs more to send it back so they will cut their losses and tell you to keep or donate.

Same is true for perishable goods returns.

Amazon pays well, better than most companies, customer service for example starts at about 15ph starting with health care pensions etc as well. But drivers are usually gig workers not employed directly with amazon but through a company who poorly pays. You can also sign up as a flex driver and pick up shifts you want but if a customer makes a complaint about a driver delivering improperly or late the driver gets three strikes and is then off roaded which means turn over can be high. There are often reports of drivers peeing in bottles etc and this is true and is true for lots of delivery drivers and truck drivers etc. They have targets to achieve, no access to toilets.

What could help is a few things:

An ease up on targets. Stop promising customers delivery within a certain time frame.
Access to toilets, agreements for longer breaks to get to bathrooms.
End to gig culture. By forcing companies like amazon deliveroo etc to stop hiring people in this way and employing them directly it allows drivers access to rights and benefits not afforded to them.

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

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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??

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

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

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?