The story (short version)

I've been an Amazon customer for 9 years. Which means nothing to Amazon. In March 2023, I attempted to gift $2500 worth through an Amazon baby registry.

Amazon didn't like that idea. They suspended my account due to "unusual payment activity". As I'm not from the US and never used a credit card before, I was unaware stores did this. I knew credit card issuers (banks etc) did. I can understand my gift wasn't entirely ordinary. The problem is what happened next. Whenever I tried to log in, I was presented with a document upload form and asked to upload a billing statement for my credit card.

The "account specialists" as Amazon calls them who review the billing statements that customers upload are fools. They can't interpret billing statements so they just decline everything. Various banks can't even provide a billing statement with the information Amazon asks for. And in some cases, Amazon literally asks for the impossible - after cancelling all orders, they require a billing statement with the relevant transactions. Which they cancelled and won't show up on any billing statement. Please, Jeff, read this book: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I'm sure your store sells it. So now what? You call customer service!

Amazon has outsourced their entire customer service. The majority barely speaks English and is completely mystified by a mail address that doesn't end in .com. This is extremely tiresome. (using nocarder's phonetic alphabet tool helps a bit) They recommended I create a new account and split my order. And then I had three suspended accounts. WORST. CUSTOMER. SERVICE. EXPERIENCE. EVER. Of course, this blundering would come back to bite me.

During this process, every attempt to log in to get to the document upload form became increasingly harder. (it's like playing lucky dip with a container filled with flypaper..) Currently, I have to enter my username and password (as usual), then I have to enter my password again, then I have to enter a code from an email, and then I have to solve a CAPTCHA that got gradually harder and harder to solve. Here's one I saved:

I felt my brain twitch as I tried to solve it (you're forced to stare at it to decipher it), and I don't even have epilepsy. Rule #1 of retail: do not induce seizures in paying customers. And if you're thinking this is a necessary evil: real carders will never even see these.

At this point the "account specialists" contacted me and said my account was under review and they would contact me by mail in the next "24 to 48 business hours" which seems like an odd way of saying "3-6 business days". And what was the outcome of this review? I have no idea. They ghosted me.

Amazon has alternatives for customers who don't have billing statements. Customers can upload a utility bill that was paid with the same credit card which is often pointless. I couldn't pay my utility bill by credit card even if I wanted to. If you can but you use a different card for that, same story.

Finally there's the option to upload a copy of a government-issued ID. NEVER SEND AMAZON A COPY OF A GOVERNMENT-ISSUED ID. This would put you at a very real risk of identity theft.

And this is the short version. For the sake of my own health, I won't work on the longer version anymore.

Curious how Jeff Bezos responded when I told him about this site? See Amazon's (non-)response. Because according to Johnny from Amazon's Executive Customer Relations, Jeff did receive my mail. If he really did, it seems nobody who works in ECR is interested in keeping their job as they just ghosted me.