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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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)

You abused their returns simples. Same happened to me last year on ebay 20 yrs account. I abused however after 3 months restriction lifted.

Stop acting as if its amazon fault. You should also clearly give address next to flat etc etc. I do as we have b c d properties

OP- have you contacted Trading Standards?

If they suspect fraudulent activity on the account, which they clearly do, they CANNNOT refund the value of the gift cards to the OP because money laundering regulations require them solely to refund to the origin.

Of course Amazon are going to be "sticklers" about complying with anti-money laundering regulations. Can you imagine headlines if they didn't?

Their returns policy is that they don't refund gift cards once applied to an account. They apparently may consider it if it hadn't been redeemed.

That is perfectly in accordance with UK law. You'll also have the same thing with the likes of Tesco, IKEA etc

This is about fraud prevention. OP hasn't even asked to have their account reviewed and reinstated yet.

As an FYI its in the T&C of ordering that drivers may not always be able to follow safe place instructions. They cannot usually call a number that is listed in the notes, especially if not connected to customer account. They cant leave specific items in safe places. And photos may not always be possible, restricted items, confidential addresses would usually mean no photos.

Also Trading Standards doesn't do as much as you think, it just gets your contact booted to the above email aliases for a slightly more specialised team to handle. Cut out the middle man and handle direct through the email is better, cos every time you call, it will say you are involved with TS and the agent cannot discuss the case, they have to arrange a call back from that team.

I always complain if this happens and point out the stupidity of the driver. It is sheer laziness and being a bit thick to dump a parcel on a doorstep and not try the (always unlocked) porch door or door bell.

Ive had one parcel ruined due to the rain, and one was potentially stolen as it had gone when i got home although there was a photo of it on my doorstep.

the cheeky bastards tried to make me wait a period of time (I think a week) before getting a refund to see “whether it turned up at a neighbours house” or “another resident had taken it in the house and I hadn’t seen it”.

if their dozy cunt of a driver did their job properly I wouldn’t have been in that position. I wasn’t out of pocket for long 😉

Why did you continue placing so many orders with a company that kept fucking up delivery?

I've not used Amazon since they delivered an empty box then said we had to call the police and get an investigation as to why there was nothing in the box and they couldn't consider a refund because it was somehow our fault 🤔

The police were helpful and I must say patient, but unimpressed. I found it unnecessarily stressful.

You can phone Amazon and eventually speak to a human. It's very difficult to do but possible. Or it was at the time pre AI that we did it

Since this fiasco, I have not used Amazon. It's about four years now. There is life beyond, and I feel very good about it but you've gotta do what's right for you.

Ah Op, I hope the amazon person you deal with can sort things out. I would mention that you will be contacting Rip Off Britain television programme as firms hate the adverse publicity. If not then contact the consumer editor of The Guardian. Again adverse publicity is not liked and usually they offer an amount of compensation. I hope you let us know how you got on. I sometimes contact companies saying I will start a campaign by asking 10 people I know to boycott them and for those 10 people to add another 10. I then say I am only an OAP who wondered what could be done. In fairness my DH once sent an email as Farm Foods were not stocking raspberry ripple ice cream after Covid and he got sent a voucher so he could buy another flavour. Recently we gained one pound from Lidl as we got home and found we hadn't been given the discounted price. Asda give good rewards if anything goes wrong so some places are better than others. Raspberry ripple is now available .