Amazon has the worst customer service I have ever encountered

[u/Intelligent-Piglet84]

It all started in June, I wanted to order books for my daughter that is starting school next week (first week of September).

I made an account, ordered the 5 books I needed and some basic supplies. The order got confirmed and everything looked good. The next day, the order was canceled, checked my app, email, could not find a reason for it at all. Checked my address, all ok, checked billing details, all ok. Could not find a problem. Tried to order it again and the account was locked due to "suspicious activity", this term would come to fucking haunt me.

I tried to contact customer support, no help, had to log in to do so and the account was suspended. Called Amazon, and tried 7 or 8 different times before I met someone that spoke something resembling English (US number).

They could not help me.

Then I got a email from them after 3-4 days, where they told me I had to verify my identity. I sent them a copy of my passport and they told me everything was in order, I could now order everything again. This was in late June.

And ever since then I have been stuck in a loop of ordering -> Account suspended due to suspicious activity -> arguing the suspension -> getting the suspension lifted -> waiting for a refund -> getting the refund in 3-5 days -> ordering again -> and same shit happens all over again. I have been on the phone with amazon every two days for over a month and I still have not gotten the books ! The problem here is that my daughter goes to a small private school and since we live in Spain these books are not possible to buy locally........ We have gotten all the Spanish books that was no issue, but the science books and specific books for specific subjects are not to be found anywhere locally (And believe me, I have tried!)

So far I have sent passport, bank statements, rental agreements, my social security number for both Norway AND Spain, verification of residency, everything they have asked for. And EVERY TIME I order it gets shut down due to the famous words "suspicious activity"..... Is amazon really incapable of handling the fact that a married couple with joint accounts from country A can be legally living in country B or am I missing something glaringly obvious here?

[u/yeastblood]

Sorry , they are terrible now. This sub is a good timeline of how far things have fallen. You can see overtime how their customer service and then customer experience have steadily fallen over the past 7-10 years. 7 years ago t Most of the subs posts were all about how Amazon has amazing customer service even when issues occurred. You could call and get compensation for even the smallest issues.

[u/Intelligent-Piglet84 → u/yeastblood]

I am not trying to be unreasonable, but I am seriously starting to believe that amazon is unable to authenticate the fact that I am the main holder of an account and my wife is a co-signer. We have tried this in my wife's name as well, and made an account for her, but she has the exact same problems as me. We have our own debit-cards with our own names as card holders, but they draw money from the same account. This is a wild-shot but it MIGHT be a reason. But then again, we have sent them bank details and bank statements to verify that we are the holders of the account?? We have like 900USD in limbo at all times now traveling between us and Amazon when all we want are some books, a USB drive and a Texas instruments calculator!

I find this totally unacceptable tbh.

[u/yeastblood → u/Intelligent-Piglet84]

Its probably a backend account issue that they cant solve and its impossible to speak to anyone who can actually fix it. I wish there was a solution but the company is so disconnected and in disarray theres no way to resolve issues like this.

[u/Intelligent-Piglet84 → u/yeastblood]

Last resort tomorrow is to get a friend of mine to order it for me but this is just ridicules

[u/yeastblood → u/Intelligent-Piglet84]

You may need to create a new account. Crazy how bad their CS has fallen.

[u/Intelligent-Piglet84 → u/yeastblood]

First world problem I know but this..... Yeah... Enough said

[u/may646]

Email Jeff bezos and Andy jassy with your issue. Provide all the proof that you have tried reaching out to customer service and the issue wasn’t resolved

[u/Intelligent-Piglet84 → u/may646]

Haha yes that seems like the final thing to try here now

[u/sopranik → u/Intelligent-Piglet84]

Since last Tuesday I've been experiencing serious problems placing orders through my account (Amazon Italy).

Specifically:

• the first order, charged to my bank account, was cancelled after the payment method was flagged for review;
• re-associating the payment method produced an address-related error, which led to another cancellation;
• subsequent attempts using my debit card and a family member’s card (on a different bank network) were unsuccessful;
• no progress was made even after changing the account password, updating the e-mail address, and trying different browsers;
• the same payment methods, when linked to family members’ and friends’ Amazon accounts, caused the same issue, which leads me to believe they have most likely been mistakenly placed on a blacklist that blocks any transactions for security reasons unknown to me;
• all cards are active and work perfectly on other platforms outside Amazon, and they were removed and re-added to my account before attempting purchases, thereby ruling out user error;
• customer service, which I have already contacted and urged numerous times in recent days, has not resolved the issue and has only forwarded the case to the specialized team, repeatedly asking me to wait 24–48 hours for a response that has never resulted in a concrete resolution or any explanation justifying my peculiar situation.

Today I am still unable to use Prime services, which I paid annually last April.