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Originally Posted by jer7583 There's just no logic in the banning thing. Ban someone, they're never able to buy from you. Tell someone no 10, 100, 1000 times to various insane or extreme requests regarding price matches and discounts, etc, maybe you'll piss them off, but there's still a chance they'll buy from you.

You are assuming each phone call and email is free. Each time you send an email or a phone call is causing amazon money.

Originally Posted by jer7583 There's just no logic in the banning thing. Ban someone, they're never able to buy from you. Tell someone no 10, 100, 1000 times to various insane or extreme requests regarding price matches and discounts, etc, maybe you'll piss them off, but there's still a chance they'll buy from you.

I think you're failing to understand that they don't make money on certain (banned) customers. Therefore you don't want them to ever buy from you again.

Originally Posted by 62t Each time you send an email or a phone call is causing amazon money.

Costing, not causing.

This thread is freaking me out. I had to return/exchange something(faulty hard drive) a couple weeks ago and I canceled an order today (found it cheaper elsewhere), and yesterday didn't receive a package UPS said was delivered to my doorstep. I haven't filed anything yet. I wonder if I should give them until the end of Monday to see if it shows up.

I guess the difference is that I haven't called and wasted man hours.

Originally Posted by jer7583 this is crazy talk. the customer should come first.This kind of attitude is crazy where they are nice and bend over backwards for you on complaints, until that final straw breaks their limits and they treat you like a criminal? Why not just be polite about refusing those account credits and "special treatment" in the first place so they don't have to consider you a "devil customer"? Or is it that you think its a good thing for people to read about these banning stories and as a result they should think "well, gosh i better not try to get any discounts at amazon or they might ban me! I'll pay full price, please!" Nobody who shops anywhere should ever have to be worried about being blacklisted, and accidentally getting their whole family's accounts blacklisted as well. This is just egregious behavior on the part of amazon and if a major news outlet was to pick up on it, they'd be backpedaling hardcore. Bottom line for me is that you can't do anything while shopping at amazon that they don't allow. If you talk to a CS rep and that rep agrees to match a price, take a return, or give a credit, that's their choice. You should not have to worry about being punished later on for it. It was fully in their power to say no to that request. This kind of attitude towards the customer just means that you will eventually wear away at any goodwill built with your most loyal customers and send them somewhere else. I know we're all CAGs but as we've seen in the Kmart threads, even the best deals can't make up for horrible customer service.

Not saying I agree one way or the other, but the overall customer satisfaction would drop if they switched to just denying customer service requests. Their strategy is to have the appearance of an overly generous customer service so that the average person has a great experience with them. They will trust Amazon as a retailer that will take care of their problems, and recommend them to friends and family.

The story has been on the (local) news before:
http://www.ketv.com/video/17405717/detail.html

I honestly think that with they need to modify their outright ban policies with advent of account-based digital goods. They are going to lose a lot of trust with their digital services if people realize they can lose access to them completely. Sure, B&M stores can ban you too, but at least it doesn't block you from goods already purchased.

if amazon did their job right maybe people wouldnt have to complain

in last 6 months

i went in to order
SNK Vs Capcom Card Fighters Clash and asked them 3 times in chat before placing order and once in email

This is the 2nd print and not the bugged verison.. they all said yes

Get the game and its the bugged verison .. amazon refunds the money and gives me 10 bucks for the problem

thinkSMART Labyrinth sent me the wrong game told me to keep the first game sent me a replacement for free

Tactics orge... all i ask is if they had the cards with the game they send me another copy for free tell me to keep the first game

out of 28 total orders in the last 6 months

Originally Posted by confoosious I think you're failing to understand that they don't make money on certain (banned) customers. Therefore you don't want them to ever buy from you again.

well obviously we're talking a difference between using the gift system for defrauding them and asking for a price match on a purchase.

Let's be logical here.

I can't believe people are even defending amazon on this shit.

Originally Posted by jer7583 well obviously we're talking a difference between using the gift system for defrauding them and asking for a price match on a purchase. Let's be logical here. I can't believe people are even defending amazon on this shit.

Smh. Everyone thats been banned by amazon has no idea why and never did anything wrong. There no way they were a huge PITA. Just like everyone in shawshank is innocent.

I will agree that you should have access to your digital content even after a ban.

Originally Posted by confoosious Smh. Everyone thats been banned by amazon has no idea why and never did anything wrong. There no way they were a huge PITA. Just like everyone in shawshank is innocent. I will agree that you should have access to your digital content even after a ban.

like I said, outside of obviously illegal or fraudulent behavior a customer should never be permanently banned, and that ban should never extend to their relatives or friends, or people that they've logged in at their computer/house.

I agree. Let's file a class action lawsuit based on the OP's story. FOR JUSTICE!

Originally Posted by jer7583 like I said, outside of obviously illegal or fraudulent behavior a customer should never be permanently banned, and that ban should never extend to their relatives or friends, or people that they've logged in at their computer/house.

And your reasoning behind that is because they might buy something in the future?

Since amazon has identified them as unprofitable customers, they don't WANT them to buy anything in the future.

Originally Posted by confoosious And your reasoning behind that is because they might buy something in the future? Since amazon has identified them as unprofitable customers, they don't WANT them to buy anything in the future.

they wouldn't have been unprofitable if amazon had denied their requests. That's on them.

You're actually serious aren't you?

If an asshole customer is keeping CSRs on the phone over and over for $10, I'd give him that ten bucks just to get him out of the queue. It's easier to get rid of someone like that by just paying him off. In the cost-benefit equation, the CSR has other things to do. The guy is never gonna go away. So you pay him and let the escalation team take care of it. It's amazon's fault that the guy was being a huge nuisance and refused to go away? No. Sometimes people are assholes and you need to just get rid of the headache.

You're completely myopic to the situation because you love the whole "CORPORATION = BAD" routine. Whatever man. Most reasonable people can see that not every customer is a good customer. There are such things as devil customers. Real pain in the ass customers. Those are the customers you don't want coming into your store. Everything you sell them is broken and it's not their fault. The price drops and they want a refund. Someone else gets a concession and they want the same thing.

A regular mom and pop operation says "We don't want your business." Amazon bans your account. It's the same thing. It's not illegal and I frankly applaud them for it. Keeping asshole customers away from amazon means that legitimate people with legitimate concerns get the proper customer service.

You want to blame amazon for everything. As if there aren't people out there constantly trying to take advantage of amazon's cs and good will. You blame amazon's cs for being too nice? uhh ok. There are TONS of people who try to take advantage of every sale, every glitch, every return allowance. Hell some of them even brag about it on CAG. If you think that Amazon is the devil, then so be it. No point in arguing with you about that I guess. Feel free to have the last word.

Op was probably just being 'too persistent' in getting the discounts, refunds and credits he felt he deserved with reps. Might have angered a rep or a rep noticed that in the costumer contact log op had just spoken with a rep and it was logged not five minutes ago and here he is again trying to get the same 'issue' resolved. As the first rep who logged the contact didn't offer a solution he wanted and one rep simply decided to internally flag his account for review as problem customer noticing a pattern.

Originally Posted by confoosious You're actually serious aren't you? If an asshole customer is keeping CSRs on the phone over and over for $10, I'd give him that ten bucks just to get him out of the queue. It's easier to get rid of someone like that by just paying him off. In the cost-benefit equation, the CSR has other things to do. The guy is never gonna go away. So you pay him and let the escalation team take care of it. It's amazon's fault that the guy was being a huge nuisance and refused to go away? No. Sometimes people are assholes and you need to just get rid of the headache. You're completely myopic to the situation because you love the whole "CORPORATION = BAD" routine. Whatever man. Most reasonable people can see that not every customer is a good customer. There are such things as devil customers. Real pain in the ass customers. Those are the customers you don't want coming into your store. Everything you sell them is broken and it's not their fault. The price drops and they want a refund. Someone else gets a concession and they want the same thing. A regular mom and pop operation says "We don't want your business." Amazon bans your account. It's the same thing. It's not illegal and I frankly applaud them for it. Keeping asshole customers away from amazon means that legitimate people with legitimate concerns get the proper customer service. You want to blame amazon for everything. As if there aren't people out there constantly trying to take advantage of amazon's cs and good will. You blame amazon's cs for being too nice? uhh ok. There are TONS of people who try to take advantage of every sale, every glitch, every return allowance. Hell some of them even brag about it on CAG. If you think that Amazon is the devil, then so be it. No point in arguing with you about that I guess. Feel free to have the last word.

I'm basing it more on my experience working in customer service with a national retailer. That kind of attitude simply didn't exist. There were rules and there were ways to bend them but there was never any indication that someone could be banned just for "asking for too much" from us.

Now fraud, that's different. But simply asking "too many times" for discounts or adjustments wouldn't cut it. A company with good customer service policies will simply give an "unfortunately, no" as many times as it takes to retain a potential or current customer. If the customer then chooses not to shop there again or not to order the item when the rules are not bent, that's their choice.

I don't think "corporations are bad" or "amazon is the devil" i actually quite like them. But these policies are confrontational with the customer. That is poor customer service.

The decisions about whether the selling price or promotion is profitable for the company should be done when those prices and promotions are set, and when the rules for adjustments and price matches are made.

This "well that customer wasn't making us money anyway" stuff is totally ignorant. You don't know what that person is or isn't going to do. If your store gives the customer the option to purchase items without your store profiting then maybe it's time to evaluate your store's pricing policies, not ban customers.

Originally Posted by jer7583 If your store gives the customer the option to purchase items without your store profiting then maybe it's time to evaluate your store's pricing policies, not ban customers.

I agree with this statement. Look at the Amazon BF3 thread, how many people got $20 free promo credit simply for calling in and asking if they could get the deal too? Amazon's CSR reps have been trained to give out promo credits in this situations, and that is a large part of the problem. I don't think most people even called in and said "hey give me a promo credit since I didn't get that e-mail!" The thing that's really dumb is that they were in the process of extending the BF3 promo to everyone, yet they still gave out a ton of credit?!

Lets be smart here, there is a reason why they give out promo in these situations, and why they give out promo credit with games. It's because they know that it will keep you coming back, and if you get a $10 or $20 credit you are likely going to spend it on something that costs more than that. There is no reason for them to give out credit every time something goes wrong with an order. We shouldn't abuse their generosity, but they should evaluate their policy in that regard.

Throwing out credit is the easiest thing to do. The average customer will always be happy at the resolution, and it cuts costs in customer service training/expertise. Amazon figures it's an easy way to keep the customer base happy and they'll ban the abusers in the long run.

Originally Posted by ShockandAww Yeah like I said it was basically a warning email. Looking back I'm surprised too. I learned my lesson. I think I've contacted them twice since the email...and only with legit questions. .

can you give me examples of legit questions?


im somewhat afraid to contact amazon because im not sure if my question is legit or not.

anybody besides OP here who got banned?


im afraid to ask amazon to adjust my gift card amount to cash value.

Originally Posted by IAmTheCheapestGamer I'm the same way usually when I get a used game, though I don't go to quite those lengths. But I DO remove any stickers from whatever store I bought them from. Then I use those same stickers to remove any residue by peeling and resticking the stickers over and over. As for using "microfiber" cloth versus a shirt or another soft cloth to wipe down the discs I've found that as long as you're gentle there are zero issues with using a shirt or other cloth to wipe discs down....well at least Blu-Rays anyway. If you're talking about a standard DVD or CD, then yeah, anything other than one of those microfiber cloths may scratch the crap out of them. Oh and FYI: I've seen the folks at places like GS using Windex on a game disc before. I don't know if the chemicals in that stuff does anything to discs, but it sure makes them shine.

HAH OCD gamers of the world unite =P I dont knwo about BD's. Im talking about classic CD/DVD games. Particuallry those horrible black bottom PS1 disks that get scratched if you look at them funny.

Im not sure about windex. It does seem to clean stuff well but im concerned about residue either damaging the disk, particularly on old CD ones and delaminating them, or just residue building up and getting off onto the lens. Hence my wash-alcohol bath-rinse method

Originally Posted by jer7583 I don't care about the amazon defense force, the fact that these amazon banning stories are so common and can be read all over the internet is enough for me to say their tablet initiative. Investing in a hardware platform like that could mean spending a huge amount of money with that company on digital goods - i simply do not want to risk any future problems a year or more from now that I might have with amazon.com physical purchases causing my account to just be banned without notice or warning, and losing access to all of that content. I ing hate apple. With a passion. But this amazon banning bullshit? It's enough to make me consider an overpriced ipad instead of a kindle fire. Again, I don't care if this happened to one person or a thousand people, or 50 thousand people, the fact that this is real, acceptable customer service policy by amazon is enough to turn me off to them in a HUGE way.

Ya.. Im amazed how many people are flaming the OP. Who knows, maybe theres more to the story, but any policy where they can just say 'hey, we'll cancel your account and you cant use or buy shit from us for whatever reason we want' is BS. Especially with stuff like the Kindle. Personally, ive never done half the shady crap im seeing some people post here, but I HAVE returned quite a few items because they were damaged in shipping.. how the is that my fault that Amazon cant package their shit right? Dont sent expensive art books in a god damn bubble mailer

Originally Posted by joshnorm Now, now. If they pick up on Xbox banning an autistic kid for "being too good at Games" they would run with this. Now that was later proven that he got the recon armor from someone who hacked it for him, etc. but it did get some press.

Yeesh, I missed this video ... One thing:

YUCK! did you see how nasty that ing controller was? Jesus christ, what the hell did the kid do to that thing. That is the nastiest controller ive ever seen. Ungh

Originally Posted by david12795 can you give me examples of legit questions? im somewhat afraid to contact amazon because im not sure if my question is legit or not. anybody besides OP here who got banned? im afraid to ask amazon to adjust my gift card amount to cash value.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=552203

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...amazon+banning

http://www.bt3central.com/showthread.php?t=40556