Jack is in college, which is a pretty expensive place. So he likes that he can use Amazon to buy textbooks for cheaper than at the campus book store, and uses the site to buy the electronics he uses in daily life as well as books for reading on his Kindle. Shall we imagine his exasperation when Amazon cut him off from his account for a mysterious “abuse of policy”?

Jack says he was terrified to receive an email from an Amazon “Account Specialist” that told him his account had been shut down, because it was linked to another one that had been closed for abuse of policy. He says he’d never had a closed account and didn’t know where to begin to fight such an action.

The canned email read:

Hello,

We’ve found your account is directly related to another account which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.com account has been closed and any open orders have been canceled.

You can review our Conditions of Use here:

http://www.amazon.com/conditionsofuse

Any attempt to open a new account will result in the same action.

Going forward, any questions must be directed to cis@amazon.com.

Best regards,

Account Specialist
Amazon.com

He called Amazon customer support and was told that only the mysterious Account Specialists could access his account information, and that they had no direct line and would only give out one email response every 24 hours.

I am at a loss for words right now. I have been a loyal Amazon customer since 2009, and have also been a loyal Amazon seller. I have purchased thousands of dollars worth of products from them, as well as sold thousands of dollars of products on Amazon. I have also utilized their “trade-in” program many, many times.

I had also tried to open a new account on Amazon.com, but that account was banned within a few hours. My other active accounts were also inaccessible by me. I am COMPLETELY locked out and in the dark right now. Before my Amazon account was closed, I had to return a product due to it arriving in a different condition as described, and I cannot even log-on to check the status of that return! I don’t even know if the return will be processed at all!

I also have a large kindle library as WELL as a large amazon app-store library, NONE of it can be accessed by me. Every time I try to log on to manage my digital content, I get the message to please “enter a valid e-mail and password.” Only the apps downloaded to my phone currently work, none of the apps “in the cloud” work.

Hello, Amazon? Anybody home? Let the poor kid back into his account, eh?

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