Amazon.com Closes a Huge Number of Accounts: Customers Are NOT Allowed to Return their Purchases Too Often

On August 28, 2008, or around that day, Amazon.com seems to have closed a huge number of accounts by the reason that the holders of those accounts have returned their purchases too often.

Amazon.com is an online retailer that sells a wide variety of merchandise. It has a return policy, but Amazon.com's return policy does not limit the number of times a customer can return what he or she has bought from them. They have also publicized their return policy, saying:

Returns are easy at Amazon.com.

Then, all of a sudden, in August, 2008, they closed a huge number of customers' accounts. Many of them are loyal Amazon customers who had been enthusiastically buying a huge amount of goods from them for many years.

One of them is a book collector who had been spending thousands of dollars on books at Amazon.com each year for many years. As we all know, Amazon.com send books poorly packaged: they just put books in a box and send them without a proper cushion material in it. Too often those books arrived damaged, so he had to return them to Amazon.com. But it seems that he was banned from Amazon.com for that.

I myself was suddenly banned from Amazon.com. I got e-mail from Amazon.com on August 28, saying that my Amazon.com account has been closed:

Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 **:**:** ***** (PDT)
From: "Amazon.com Customer Service"
To: "*****@*****.***" <*****@*****.***>
Subject: Your Amazon.com Account Has Been Closed

Hello from Amazon.com.

A careful review of your account indicates you've experienced an extraordinary number of incidents with your orders and corresponding shipments.

In the normal course of business, the occasional problem is inevitable. The rate at which such problems have occurred on your account is extraordinary, however, and cannot continue. Effective immediately, your Amazon.com account is closed and you are no longer able to shop in our store.

Please know that any accounts related to yours have also been closed. If you were to open a new account, the same will result and it will also be closed. In the event that you attempt to do so, we will not accept the return of any additional orders, nor will we issue further refunds in connection with any future orders. We appreciate your cooperation in refraining from using our web site.

If you require additional assistance, or have any concerns, feel free to contact us directly at account-appeals@amazon.com.

Please do not contact regular Customer Service again, as they will no longer be able to assist you.

Regards,

Account Specialist
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com
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I had been buying DVDs and books from Amazon.com for more than eight years. The amount I bought from Amazon.com is rather huge. I am a collector of DVDs, so I check my DVDs carefully and returned them when there were scratches on them or when there were other defects with them.

Then I was suddenly banned from Amazon last month. I thought that this was some kind of mistake, but it was not. At least I wanted to check out the status of my recent orders, but I could not log into my account at all. This might be the worst part of it.

Actually none of those banned from Amazon could not log into their account. As a result, they were unable to check out the status of their recent orders or any of their past orders. This is very frustrating for us, banned Amazon customers. I think at least Amazon should let us log into our accounts.