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Original poster

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

137 replies

PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 28/08/2026 16:00

My account has been restricted by Amazon. Because I violated their returns and refunds policy. I'm gobsmacked (sorry to those who hate that word).

I am only allowed to make digital purchases.

Have been with Amazon for over 20 years and there's never been any issues with my account.

Of late, yes, I have returned several items, for various reasons (faulty, etc) and several packages have gone missing as, despite my explicit instructions on my account, the Amazon delivery people continued to leave my parcels in an unsafe place. Mainly, the public entrance foyer of my block of flats. They are still doing this with parcels for other residents.

I have a gift card balance on the account of over £200 and I have been told that they will not be refunding this money to me. WTF?

This is made worse by the fact that I recently placed an order and applied the gift cards to that order, and it certainly looked as if the purchase had gone through, with the gift cards as payment. However, when I received my credit card statement, the payment had been taken from my credit card. So, I am now £170 out of pocket and have have a huge gift card balance that I can't use.

Please, can anyone offer any advice here? Is there ANYONE that I can appeal to at Amazon? Is it even legal for them to keep my money like this??

Thank you in advance. I'm totally blindsided by this.I cannot emphasise strongly enough that I am not a dodgy customer. There has never been ANY issues with my account up till now.

OP posts:
Original poster
PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 07/09/2026 14:00

Have heard precisely zero from Amazon. Have sent several emails to their specialist departments and have been roundly ignored.
Spoken to a few customer service agents who said they would 'escalate' the issue and still...radio silence.

OP posts:
MustTryHarderAndHarder · 07/09/2026 14:34

PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 07/09/2026 14:00

Have heard precisely zero from Amazon. Have sent several emails to their specialist departments and have been roundly ignored.
Spoken to a few customer service agents who said they would 'escalate' the issue and still...radio silence.

There was a case on Rip Off Britain this morning about another issue with Amay.

You have to keep trying.

Longtimelurkerfinallyposts · 07/09/2026 14:49

I don't understand why people keep commenting that Amazon won't/ don't have to release the gift card funds to the OP, whether because she didn't but them herself or any other reason.
What the OP actually wants is for them to refund her credit card for the £170 taken from it to pay for her latest order - as this was not the method of payment she intended to use for it - and apply this purchase cost to her Amazon gift card account instead. Presumably this would leave her with about £30 in that account to make "digital purchases" in future.
And having suffered from this disastrous level of 'customer service' hopefully she'll find alternative retailers for future purchases/ deliveries (which has the bonus effect of not propping up Amazon's business model/ bad treatment of workers).

GreenFootstool · 07/09/2026 14:52

@Longtimelurkerfinallyposts because it's irrelevant that she picked the wrong address and wrong payment method - both of those are her fault, not Amazon's and they are under no obligation to support her by refunding a penny.

JHound · 07/09/2026 15:07

I don’t understand continuing to order parcels with this known issue. Of course they were going to block you.

Them not refunding a gift card is just odd though.

Daisywhatsyouranswer · 07/09/2026 15:19

JHound · 07/09/2026 15:07

I don’t understand continuing to order parcels with this known issue. Of course they were going to block you.

Them not refunding a gift card is just odd though.

It’s not, it’s to avoid money laundering.

op, if you changed to lockers why didn’t you have that as the default. ?

Original poster
PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 07/09/2026 15:53

@GreenFootstool - I DIDN'T choose the wrong payment method. I chose to pay by gift card balance and that's how it went through. I

spoke to a customer service agent today and she seemed to suggest that at first, the gift card balance WAS used but then, for some reason, they changed it. As I have stated earlier in the thread, my gift balance WAS used for part of the order - that's one of the things that don't make sense.

OP posts:
Original poster
PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 07/09/2026 16:00

@Longtimelurkerfinallyposts - thank you, that's exactly it. I swear that when I paid, the gift balance was used. If it had said anything about charging my visa I would have stopped the order.

In fact, it is clear that my visa was charged two days after the order was placed, and one day after an item was delivered, so something must have been happening behind the scenes as they wouldn't release an order that had not been paid for.

The customer service agent today seemed to be suggesting that my card was charged because my account was restricted, but it WASN'T restricted at that point, hence my being able to place an order in the first place!

My account was only restricted when I let Amazon know about an item that had not been delivered. Clearly, this was me scamming them again...

Yes, your're right, alternative retailers will be found!

OP posts:
Original poster
PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 07/09/2026 16:02

@Daisywhatsyouranswer - I'm not sure about that. I guess I never changed the default address, so just clicked the locker option when ordering. Definitely my mistake there.

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Original poster
PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 18/09/2026 15:21

To the person who suggested buying gift cards with my gift card balance; it's not allowed! Just tried and it's not possible.

Called them to ask what constitutes 'digital purchases' and it's video games and music.

Have done a chargeback with my credit card company for the faulty item and have sent a registered letter of complaint to their head office. Citizen's Advice tells me to wait for 14 days and if no response received, I can do a Letter Before Action and take them to the small claims court.

They are still ignoring every single email.

OP posts:
Allseeingallknowing · 18/09/2026 15:55

Have you tried Martin Lewis, money saving expert, or the Daily mails’s money expert- they have sold many complicated issues.?

Original poster
PunishmentRoundupWithJoon · 18/09/2026 16:49

@Allseeingallknowing - I wrote to both the Mail and Telegraph consumer editors and haven't heard anything back so presuming they are not using my case.

Might try money saving expert. Feeling a bit off kilter at the moment, having found out they won't even let me use my balance. The guy at Citizens Advice was a bit brusque and demanding when I was asking about small claims court - hope I don't get him next time!

Thank you.

OP posts:
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