If you’re an online seller, then you must have encountered a troublesome customer at one point. These customers have suspicious activities in their accounts or have too many returned items.
With big e-commerce companies like Amazon, troublesome customers can be banned and blacklisted. Some accounts can get temporarily disabled, while some get banned permanently.
What are the reasons why Amazon bans customers? Can your physical address be banned?
Here’s Why Amazon Can’t Ban your Address:
Amazon can’t ban your delivery address but it can ban or deactivate your account. This can be a temporary or permanent ban. On the other hand, Amazon third-party retailers can ban your account or physical address and decline your purchase from their store.
What Could Cause Amazon To Ban Your Account?
When Amazon bans an account, this is mostly due to suspicious activities.
They do this to protect Amazon Vendors and third-party sellers from troublesome customers and prevent them from getting scammed.
Banning accounts with suspicious activities also helps minimize losses.
Amazon may ban your account for several reasons, but here are the most common ones.
Unusual Changes in Account Information
If customers make unusual and sudden changes to their account information, Amazon may flag this because it appears sketchy.
Any sudden action, such as random and frequent changes to the shipping address, username, email address, and contact information, may trigger Amazon’s security system, causing your account to be banned.
Change in Account Type
There are two types of Amazon customer accounts: personal and business.
If you suddenly change your personal account to a business account, it can also trigger Amazon’s security system, causing your account to be banned.
Having Multiple Accounts
While there is no strict rule on the number of Amazon accounts that customers are allowed to have, having multiple accounts may be flagged as suspicious activity.
It can trigger Amazon’s security system if you have several accounts with the same shipping address but different email addresses and contact information.
Using Different IP Addresses to Log In
If you frequently sign in to your Amazon account from different IP addresses or geographical locations, it can be flagged as suspicious activity, and your account may be banned.
Location
Some locations have a high rate of fraud and suspicious activities.
This includes countries like China, India, and Nigeria. Accounts made from these countries can get banned and blacklisted.
Suspicious Purchase Activities
This is the most common reason why Amazon accounts or IP addresses get banned.
If a customer frequently reports that they did not receive the package even though there is clear evidence showing that it has indeed been delivered, their account may get banned.
Also, if customers keep purchasing items and returning them almost immediately, their account may get banned.
This is to protect retailers from troublesome customers, as based on an IHL report that focuses on return losses, Amazon retailers lose about $600 billion a year from returns.
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TOS Violations
If you have any form of Terms of Service violation, your Amazon account may get banned.
In addition to the reasons stated above, Amazon also does a routine clean-up of accounts.
Because there are hundreds of millions of users on Amazon, its security system utilizes AI to analyze accounts in large batches.
It occasionally deletes accounts with inconsistencies in the database.
How Common is This?
Out of these 300 million users, there is a huge percentage of accounts with suspicious activity, and they do get banned.
Amazon will not ban your delivery address, but it can ban your IP address. It will also ban your Amazon account, which can be permanent or temporary.
Accounts with a temporary ban can still make purchases on the website, but they cannot refund the item.
On the other hand, a full permanent ban means completely losing access to your account. It also means losing access to the remainder of your Prime membership if you subscribed to Amazon Prime.
Third-party sellers can also ban you, even if Amazon did not ban your account. These retailers can ban your address and decline your purchase from their store.
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How Can You Check If Amazon Banned Your Account?
It is quite easy to check if Amazon banned your account.
If your Amazon account has been banned, be it temporary or permanent, a message will appear when you try to log in, saying, “Your account has been disabled.”
Eventually, you will receive an email informing you that your account has been disabled. The email should also tell you if it’s a temporary or permanent ban.
The first thing you can do if your Amazon account is disabled is to contact Amazon through email. You can also contact Amazon through their customer service phone number.
If you live in the U.S., you can also contact Amazon through their live chat support.
Does Amazon Give Warnings If You Return Too Many Packages?
Typically, most Amazon items can be returned within 30 days, which entitles you to a refund, unless it’s from a third-party seller that has a different return policy. Sometimes, Amazon’s generous return policy gets taken advantage of.
It is generally acceptable to return Amazon items every once in a while, especially if there’s a valid reason.
However, it may be flagged as a suspicious activity if you frequently return your Amazon orders for no apparent reason.
If you return too many packages, Amazon will notify you of the return guidelines. The notice will also indicate that they can disable your account anytime.
There is no exact limit to how many returns you can make, but generally, if you return 5 to 10 items in a span of 1 month, you may get a warning from Amazon.
According to some customers, they’d get a warning if they ended up returning more than 10% of their Amazon orders.
Suppose nearly all of your Amazon deliveries end up being returned or refunded. In that case, Amazon’s security system will flag this as suspicious activity, which can eventually lead to your account being banned temporarily or permanently.
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Sources:
Why Is My Amazon Buyer Account Suspended?
Amazon Return Warning (Returning Too Many Items, Getting Banned, Limits + More)