
Banned by Amazon for returning faulty goods - eginhard
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/18/banned-by-amazon-returning-faulty-goods-blocked-credit-balance
======
BogusIKnow
If you follow electronic forums or photo forums, for many people it's common
practice to order new electronic or photo toys and return them, with no
intention to ever buy them. They boast how clever they are.

All the rest of us then receive "new" articles from Amazon that have been
opened, played around and returned by these people.

Tell tale sign in the article:

"[..] said the majority of items he returned were high-value electronic items
that had failed. He had chosen to cancel problematic purchases rather than
wait for Amazon to simply exchange the item."

He had no intention to get an exchange, because he had no intention to ever
buy those articles.

~~~
x1798DE
I'm not sure I understand what the motivation is for doing this with
electronics? To try them out? Who would want a camera that you can only use
for like a week or so?

~~~
BogusIKnow
Some want to play with new cameras, show that they have them, post to forums
but don't have the money.

Others order 5 cameras and lenses, select one, and send 4 back to Amazon.

~~~
mchahn
> Others order 5 cameras and lenses, select one, and send 4 back to Amazon.

I have been tempted to do this. It makes deciding on a purchase very easy. Now
that I've read this I will not do it. Maybe this is Amazon PR to discourage
people like me.

------
jasonkester
Seems entirely reasonable to shut off a customer like this.

It makes sense for Amazon to eat losses in returns, since the goodwill it
generates offsets the a comparatively tiny losses it has to eat. But at some
point you have to draw a line with obviously abusive customers. 37 returns in
3 years in not something that happens to a regular unlucky guy. It's the
pattern you see in the guy who buys the 50" plasma screen a week before the
Superbowl then returns it the day after. It's a guy you don't want as your
customer.

~~~
anon1385
There are categories of products on Amazon where the majority of the listings
are counterfeit products. One could easily face returning a product 3 or four
times before finding a listing that is what it claims to be (or before giving
up and finding a retailer that isn't trying to defraud you).

Examples include oral-b toothbrush heads and "genuine" apple laptop batteries.

~~~
dazc
Are these sold by amazon or marketplace sellers?

~~~
anon1385
>Dispatched from and sold by Amazon

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oral-B-TriZone-Electric-
Toothbrush-R...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oral-B-TriZone-Electric-Toothbrush-
Replacement/dp/B007WSAB1Q/)

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oral-B-Precision-Clean-Toothbrush-
Re...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oral-B-Precision-Clean-Toothbrush-
Replacement/dp/B003U9V7NM/)

See the various reviews about them coming apart and cutting people in the
mouth. Being able to scrape off the logo with a fingernail is the usual
giveaway.

~~~
dazc
My impression here is that some people are getting fakes, possibly because
they are buying from marketplace sellers. The reviews don't distinguish but
the number of positive reviews suggests this?

That said, one has to ask why Oral B, and others, are allowing their brands to
be tarnished in this way. I'm assuming there are many more dissatisfied
customers who don't take the trouble to leave a review?

~~~
tyingq
If you expand the replies to most of the unfavorable reviews, it becomes clear
that the fakes are from marketplace sellers, and not the main listing. As you
say though, Amazon and Oral B should be doing something about it.

------
jinushaun
I've encountered so many defective or questionable products on Amazon lately.
I basically have no trust what I receive any more. I even had issues returning
items. I've started buying directly from companies, or offline in real stores
more often.

~~~
glup
Same here (Prime customer for the last 6 years). Their drop-down menu for the
reason for a return doesn't have an option for "is complete crap, but couldn't
tell from the reviews because of all the Vine Voice and company shrills." I
end up paying the shipping back, when I could almost always return the
equivalent item to a brick-and-mortar store without a charge.

It seems to me that there are certain kinds of items where, like toasters and
countertop dishwashers, where Amazon has a dozen lazily branded versions of
the same (low quality, guaranteed to fail in a year) OEM product, no mid-
range, and then 1-3 high-end ones for 5* the price of the low quality tier.

~~~
rhexs
Thank you. I've e-mailed support/Jeff asking for a way to disable Vine Voice
reviews from showing up, but no dice yet.

Most of the Amazon reviews already game the system trying to get as many
upvotes as possible (the latest trend is posting some 10 page meaningless
"comparison" of X product and Y,Z,T competitors), but Vine Voice is even
worse. Have yet to see anything under 4 stars.

------
hippich
I see a lot of complaints about how Amazon dealt with this customer.

I will tell you story from other end - I sell few private labeled products via
Amazon as a third party seller. I had instances where people return supplement
bottle with reason "Do not match description on website". Bottle is unopened,
picture is exact picture of the product, description is the same. The only
reason for return is - "Changed my mind", but it will cost $5.5 to ship back
in that case, that's why "Not as described".

As a result this costs amazon few bucks for return shipping, it costs me few
bucks for "pick and pack" fees.

So do not assume automatically customers are always right. There are people
who takes advantage of it.

We all need to work together:

1) sellers needs to listen to customers and bring high quality product

2) amazon needs to weed out sellers with poor quality of service

3) amazon needs to weed out buyers who either take advantage of the system, or
just never learn a lesson about "if it look cheap, it is probably a junk" (and
this is because buyer can take an advantage)

4) buyers - be responsible and think about consequences of you actions. And
not blame everybody else. Also, try to work out with amazon/seller - there is
no shame in reaching out and explaining problems. Most likely you problems
will be solved.

Only via such iterative way whole ecosystem can grow into convenient and
efficient thing of tomorrow.

~~~
tyingq
I don't see an easy solution here. Sellers end up raising prices to compensate
for these kind of buyers.

Then, what happens is that new sellers enter the market and undercut
you...until they figure out they are losing money.

The trouble is, there's no end to the pipeline of new sellers :)

~~~
hippich
And there is no end to the pipeline of new buyers who expect miracles to
happen, i.e. quality product, which normally cost $100, to buy with shipping
for $10.

Also, sellers already get kicked out from Amazon quite often for not being
responsible. Now we see other side to be forced to be responsible. If anything
- this is good tendency, unless government or media will intervene.

------
icebraining
Sounds doubtful to me that under EU law, a company can simply deny access to
funds in a gift card, even if it's not actual money. Sounds like something a
small claims court should be able to resolve, has anyone tried it?

~~~
beejiu
The article mentions a case where Amazon Prime membership wasn't refunded. The
Amazon Prime terms state that it would be refunded on termination. However, it
also has the following term:

> However, we will not give any refund for termination related to conduct that
> we determine, in our discretion, violates these Terms or any applicable law,
> involves fraud or misuse of the Prime membership, or is harmful to our
> interests or another user.

IANAL, but would that not constitute an unfair contract term under UK law?

~~~
joesmo
Prime memberships are _not_ refunded upon termination.

------
merb
Actually closing the account is dumb, it would be more fair to just stop the
account from buying stuff (still allowing to see videos, etc..). And mostly in
the current world I doubt it's useful to block them forever..

------
junto
I'm guessing that Amazon suspect that the user is doing something that they
feel is deliberately untoward, but that they _cannot prove_.

Therefore, rather than feel that they are being cheated, they decline to have
the person as a customer any longer. Whilst I find it hard on the customer if
they have unused gift cards on their account, I have no problem with Amazon
choosing not to deal with a customer that deliberately is trying to exploit
the company.

It is no different to a physical shop declining the custom of any walk-in
customer. That is their right, as it is our right to spend our money there or
not.

------
tyingq
Not enough info here to really render an opinion. Since Amazon won't discuss
it, you're hearing only one side of the issue.

What if those 37 returns were mostly in a row? Or mixed in with questionable
chargebacks? Or ?

There is one thing Amazon says that seems like a clue here _" In a tiny
fraction of cases we are forced to close accounts where we identify extreme
account abuse."_

------
happywolf
Amazon doesn't have the best PR lately. A few months ago it was in the news on
the harsh working condition, and now it is shutting down customer accounts.
Most likely Amazon has its own reason, but the information so far doesn't shed
any light on if the customer has indeed abused the system.

~~~
dazc
Also there is a campaign against amazon in the UK. Politically motivated in
the case of the guardian and some other reason (maybe 'top gear' or a general
fear of future competition) from the bbc.

------
j-c-m
Amazon doesn't like to ban customers.

Chances are, banned customers are buying expensive products with no intention
to ever keep them to:

\- "Test" the latest gadget for a few weeks.

\- "Review" for their "Youtube review" or forum friends.

------
viperscape
I returned 20 items in 2015 alone. Half were shit products returned shortly
after purchase, the other half were probably unused still in packaging. Only
one was electronic. They have tightened up return policy, often you must
choose "wrong description" just to get it returned fairly. I'm pretty sure
this person abused the return policy. I'll also say the QC on items sold has
gone down significantly. There is so much shit on there now, it really ruins
the amazon experience.. I really don't enjoy returning stuff, it stresses me
out every time.

------
0xmohit
Amazon also happens to close seller accounts with equal ease (and no
explanation, of course): [http://aaron.kavlie.net/amazon-com-just-closed-my-
seller-acc...](http://aaron.kavlie.net/amazon-com-just-closed-my-seller-
account-no-warning-no-details/)

------
cm2187
And it depends what they buy. A 5-10% return rate for hard drives isn't
unreasonable.

~~~
IshKebab
Within 30 days? Yes it is.

~~~
cm2187
DOA are very frequent with hard drives, particularly WD in my experience.

~~~
roel_v
Are you claiming here it is normal that one out of every 10 WD hard disks sold
are defective by the time they reach the customer? That's a very bold and
frankly ridiculous sounding claim.

~~~
covercash
Backblaze does a thorough hard drive reliability report, here's their latest:

[https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-
reliability-q4-201...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-
reliability-q4-2015/)

~~~
deelowe
Those stats quote AFR not IMR. The OP was talking about infant mortality.

~~~
cm2187
For the avoidance of doubt, I count as infant mortality when a new hard drive
would drop from a hardware RAID array during initial construction of the array
(we are talking about NAS drives). Not just "the drive will not start".

------
1293712
Books shipped by Amazon in Europe often have defects to the point that I
suspected that Amazon has a deal with publishing houses to sell B-quality.

I've had slight water damage, individual pages printed in light gray instead
of black, scratched DVDs and so on.

I'd estimate that 30% of Amazon deliveries had some defect that would warrant
a return.

~~~
nextos
That's also my experience. Horrible quality from some major publishers they
sell.

------
Mithaldu
Inconsequential fluff piece. Complaining, unverifiable claims, no mention of
lawyer.

~~~
DanBC
It's England. Lawyers are a measure of last resort here, not a first response.

~~~
Mithaldu
He's dealing with Amazon, an american company. They won't listen to anything
else. Heck, according to the article they've explicitly said they won't listen
to anything else since they've told him not to contact their support.

Edit: Turns out the real content of the closure message is available online:

[http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/amazoncom-
seattle-...](http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/amazoncom-seattle-
washington-c93533.html)

It includes the following line: "If you require additional assistance, or have
any concerns, feel free to contact us directly at account-appeals@amazon.com."

This was conveniently left out of the story, and there is also no mention of
his appeal made in the article.

~~~
SixSigma
He's dealing with Amazon Europe Core SARL, and Amazon EU SARL which are not
American companies. Their addresses are both: 5 Rue Plaetis, L-2338,
Luxembourg.

~~~
Mithaldu
Their registered adresses don't matter when their policies are dictated by the
american head company. They're not somehow magically free to make 100% their
own decisions just because they're in another country.

~~~
nolok
Their registered addresses matter because it dictates which laws they obey to.

~~~
Mithaldu
Exactly correct, and thus, after talking to said appeals email, a lawyer
should be the next step.

------
joesmo
"He emailed Amazon to point out the unfairness in closing accounts based on
unpublished limits of legitimate returns, but says he received a standard
response refusing to reopen his account."

Note, that he did nothing wrong, he violated no Amazon rules, violated no
laws, and still got fucked by Amazon. This is how Amazon treats its loyal
customers. I had about ~$100 of returns when they closed my account after I
had been doing $10-20k of business with them for years on a _paid Prime
account_ opened in the late 90's. There are a lot of defective products that
Amazon sells and the mere nature of online commerce dictates that there will
be a lot of returns. To randomly close people's accounts, stealing their
products, money, and even AWS computing resources, that's fucking criminal.

"How easy it is to set up an alternative account remains to be seen."

No, it doesn't. You cannot set up another Amazon account (you can but they
will close it) and neither can your family or I assume anyone living at your
address, ever agin. In fact, your family's accounts will also be closed if not
at the same time, soon thereafter. Just in case Amazon didn't fuck you hard
enough, they will also fuck your family over too.

If this is how Amazon wants to continue doing business, fine. They can
continue to fuck over their customers because they're big enough and we can't
do anything about it. It makes Walmart look saintly in their practices. Fuck
Amazon. I hope more people realize what's happening and boycott this piece of
shit company.

And if you have AWS resources, you should really think to yourself if this is
the kind of company you want to trust with all your computing resources, a
company that will for no reason and without warning close your account and
likely kill your company in the process?

