By Khadeeja Safdar and Laura Stevens
It appears even Amazon.com Inc. has its limits.
The e-commerce giant bans shoppers from the site for infractions
such as returning too many items, sometimes without telling them
what they did wrong.
Amazon has cultivated an image as a customer-friendly company in
part by making it easy for shoppers to send back items they don't
want. The site's lax return policies have conditioned consumers to
expect the same treatment from other retailers, adding to pressure
on brick-and-mortar chains. But shoppers are finding out there are
some customers Amazon has determined aren't worth keeping.
Nir Nissim received an email in March notifying him that his
account had been closed because he violated the company's
conditions of use agreement. "You cannot open a new account or use
another account to place orders on our site," Amazon wrote in an
email.
The 20-year-old, who works at an ice cream shop in Israel, said
he had a $450 gift card balance that he could no longer use. "I
contacted them almost every day for a week or two," he said.
Eventually a customer service agent told him that his account
had been closed due to his return activity. Mr. Nissim said he has
returned just one item this year -- a computer drive -- and four
items last year. He sent more messages to protest the ban,
including one to Chief Executive Jeff Bezos. An Amazon employee --
responding on behalf of Mr. Bezos -- notified him he was
reinstated.
"We want everyone to be able to use Amazon, but there are rare
occasions where someone abuses our service over an extended period
of time," an Amazon spokesman said. "We never take these decisions
lightly, but with over 300 million customers around the world, we
take action when appropriate to protect the experience for all our
customers."
The spokesman said Amazon encourages customers to contact the
company if they think they have been mistakenly banned.
Shira Golan, 23, said she spends thousands of dollars a year on
Amazon, buying everything from clothes and shoes to groceries and
toiletries. She said she has asked for refunds in the past on
clothing and shoe orders, some of which she says were damaged or
the wrong items. "I didn't think it was so significant especially
considering how much I buy, " she said.
Earlier this month her account was shut down without
explanation, she said. The actuary, who lives in New York City,
said she called and emailed the company to learn a reason for the
closure. On May 10, she received a response saying she was
terminated permanently because she "reported an unusual number of
problems" with her orders. "I didn't get any warning," she said.
"If I knew this would happen, I wouldn't buy clothes and shoes on
Amazon."
Dozens of people have complained on Twitter, Facebook and other
online forums that Amazon closed their accounts without warning or
explanation. Amazon doesn't tell customers in its return policy
that their return behavior can get them banned, but the company
says in its conditions of use that it reserves the right to
terminate accounts in its sole discretion. Some people said they
have also received email alerts from Amazon about their return
activity.
Amazon declined to disclose how many customers had been
subjected to such a ban.
Retailers lose billions of dollars annually because of return
abuse or fraud, which includes behavior such as requesting a refund
for items that are used, stolen or bought somewhere else. The Wall
Street Journal previously reported that chains such as Best Buy Co.
and J.C. Penney Inc., have hired a third-party firm called Retail
Equation to develop a "risk score" on each customer for the purpose
of policing returns.
According to former Amazon managers, the company terminates
accounts for behaviors including requesting too many refunds,
sending back the wrong items or violating other rules, such as
receiving compensation for writing reviews. Cases are typically
evaluated by a human after algorithms surface the account as
suspicious, they said.
It tends to happen when "you're creating a lot of headaches for
Amazon," said Chris McCabe, a former policy enforcement
investigator at Amazon and now a consultant at EcommerceChris
LLC.
Shoppers also are more likely to get flagged if they mark an
atypical reason for their returns. For example, an account could
get flagged if a customer says an item didn't arrive as described
when the other 99% of customers who made the return did so simply
because they didn't want it.
"If your behavior is consistently outside the norm, you're not
really the kind of customer they want," said James Thomson, a
former senior manager at Amazon and now partner at brand
consultancy Buy Box Experts.
In past years, customers have received closure notices that
explicitly say they have returned too many items. In 2015, Amazon
sent Paul Fidalgo an email saying that the company was permanently
closing his account because of excessive returns.
"We have closed this account because you have consistently
returned a large number of your orders," the company said in the
email. "While we expect the occasional problem with an order, we
cannot continue to accept returns at this rate."
The 40-year-old communications director, who lives in Saco,
Maine, said he returned multiple smartphones within a short period,
not knowing there would be consequences. He pleaded with Amazon to
let him back, but the company didn't budge.
For a year, Mr. Fidalgo said he fragmented his shopping,
visiting several sites in place of the one-stop destination. He
could access books he had purchased for his Kindle but wasn't
allowed to buy new material. "It was dizzying and disorienting," he
said. "You don't realize how intertwined a company is with your
daily routine, until it's shut off."
He finally got back on the site after receiving credits that he
asked Amazon how to redeem. "Most people think Amazon is so
extraordinarily generous, but that's until you realize you have
crossed the line."
--Shayndi Raice contributed to this article.
Write to Khadeeja Safdar at khadeeja.safdar@wsj.com and Laura
Stevens at laura.stevens@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 22, 2018 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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