I woke up Saturday morning to this nastygram on my wife’s Amazon account. I’ll paste it here:
Hello,
We have canceled your order and voided your current gift card balance.
We have taken these actions because you are attempting to use Amazon Gift Cards that are in violation of our Terms and Conditions. We cannot reissue the gift cards or reimburse you for these funds. If this activity continues, we may take a permanent action on your account.
If you believe you received this message in error, please call Customer Service at:
Customers within U.S. and Canada: 1-888-280-4331 International customers: 1-206-922-0880
You can find more information on the Gift Card Terms and Conditions Help page:
Sincerely,
Account Specialist
Amazon.com
Before I even checked my account, I had my wife call in and of course the overseas rep had no clue. I then asked her why my order was cancelled, and she said something due to the amount of the order. I had ordered 3 Ipad 128GBs, which while large shouldn’t have been in any conflict of their stupid gift cards t&c. While I was still on the phone with the rep, I signed into her account and did notice that they actually refunded her gift card balance back to her account, so all is well. For some more background:
Where I bought the gift cards – I bought 2 of them from Safeway and 1 from Kroger. I redeemed 3 different types to the account – 1 Congrats, 1 Bday, and 1 old school design (that’s all they had at Kroger.) I had actually redeemed the birthday and the Kroger designs to my mom’s account and ordered the same exact order just fine earlier in the day! So I don’t know what crack they were smoking.
As for my wife’s acount, she had bought some Ipads earlier in the week, some Apple watches, all shipped to the same address (no order as large as the 3 iPad one.) However like I said, my account and my mom’s account ordered the exact same orders on the exact same days, so I’m not really sure wtf is going on.
I replied back to the email asking what t&c I broke, but I never heard back. Go figure.
It made me think on Saturday morning – what if they shut down my account? How would I get any gift card balance out? Do I have to file a BBB or contact my attorney general? Can you imagine the hassle involved?!? My wife’s account was locked in the past due to loading a lot with GC’s and making big orders (didn’t ramp it up correctly,) but that was resolved with a phone call and some cc verification. Going forward, I may let this account die down. It seems they aren’t playing around with the “If this activity continues, we may take a permanent action on your account.”
Something happened to me I had 2400 in my Amazon gift card balance and I tried buying a MacBook.I got spooked because of your posts of amazon canning your accounts. So I went and used most of 2400 and got Best Buy gift cards. I have about 500 left and will use it at up.
They closed my account with over $2,000 in balance. Pure fraud and we need to file a class action lawsuit on this issue. It’s too common and the consumer has no real way of responding. Plus they lie and say they will call back. Never do
Ya they did the same to me except I only lost $50. I was really looking forward to my package now it won’t even let me purchase anything off Amazon anymore. Pissing me off
Amazon become a scam , they take my balance as well and just close me , no help within a month , just time waste , this company no longer must exist to scam their customers for money ! The so fraudulent last year, they took money from many of my friends last year,
Automated mails from them only –
We have canceled your order and voided the Amazon gift card balance used in the purchase.
We took these actions because you tried to use Amazon.co.uk gift cards that are in violation of our terms and conditions. We cannot reissue the Amazon.co.uk gift cards or reimburse you for these funds. If this activity continues, we may take a permanent action on your account.
I had the same issue. My roommate is autistic he had wanted a nintendo switch for Christmas 2019. I had to wait for a bonus check in January. To teach him about ordering and money, I sent him a $450 gift card electronically from my amazon account to him via text.
He put the card into his amazon account ordered the switch and a few other things. All was good. 12 hours later he got the same email that he violated terms …. Voided the card and cancelled the orders….we were confused. I called amazon because it would not be good if my roommate called. He has issues with anger.
Anyways the rep said he violated terms as states in the email. I asked what that term was. She could not answer. I got frustrated and hung up before I said something I would regret. The next day I called again. I got no where. Finally asked for a supervisor. He said we got caught in their fraud algorhythm and said he would send an email to customer accounts and they would call in 48 hours. You cannot call directly.
We waited 3 days and no call. I called again, went through the process and waited another 3 days. Nothing. I did this for 3 months. Still nothing. Finally a supervisor said dispute the charge. Well that is another issue with paypal. It took them 3 months to investigate and sided with amazon.
Paypal said that since I purchased the gift card and my roommate got it. What happened after that is out of their control.
So basically we were f#$ked by amazon for $450. I honestly had forgot about this. I would love any ideas on how to reach someone at Amazon who cares. They basically stole our money.
Bob
Sme here as well, I purchased the e-gift card RIGHT FROM THE AMAZON.ca Store in dec 2020. My fiance makes a bunch of orders on amazon.ca weeks ago, only to find out bunch of the items got canceled with the same message you guys are getting and says this:
“Because you received this gift card from a third party, we cannot reissue the gift card or reimburse you for these funds. We suggest that you contact the party who sold or gave you the gift card. Always buy Amazon.ca gift cards from authorized third-party sellers. We will close any customer account in which we see repeated use of gift cards in violation of our Terms and Conditions.”
Now I’m sure this is all automated, but how dumb is their system telling us to always buy from authorized sellers… this was a e-gift card bought from Amazon’s website!! Pretty annoyed we have to now chase down this missing funds since they aren’t giving it back to her as if I did some fraud by purchasing this right from the Amazon.ca store.
Hello there, I just recently purchased a $450 gift card from city market and redeemed it on my new amazon account, with a few hours I received a email that told my account was under review and need additional information regarding my gift card purchase. I scanned my store recite and sent them the information and got a very broad response, that my account gift card was in terms of violation. I still cant figure out whats going on and its day 2 now. I cant login to my account and cant figure out if my card has any money on it, I am ANGRY to say the least and don’t know what to do.
They did the same thing to use. 22 calls in, all with a promise to restore or contact us in 48 hours. They never call
THEY STOLE MINES TOO BOTH ACCOUNTS I LOST $57. NEVER CONTACTED ME
It looks like they do this as a regular course of business.
I bought 3 gift cards for 3 graduating grandkids on June 1st. Because of the ‘virus’, they did not have their graduation exercises until mid July. Two of the gift cards were ‘no problem’, but the 3rd (for $500) did! My grandson ‘redeemed the gift card on August 4th and put in an order for an iPad and some accessories, totalling $1,400+. As part of the payment, he used the $500 gift card and the balance was charged to his credit card. ‘THEY CONFIRMED THE ORDER AND PAYMENT DETAILS” on August 4th. On August 10th, he got the same ‘Form-Letter’ email that you did. Except, they closed his account!
We have made at least 10 calls to them, talking to “Lead” people and every time they tell us they have to check with another department and they will get back to us within 48 hours (which they never do)!
I am going to elevate this to the AGs office, because, THEY STOLE MY GRANDSON’s MONEY! I’ll bet they do this often!
In the end what happened to that whole situation?
where you able to solve this problem?
Good afternoon, did you have the same problem and could you solve it?