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How Many Returns You Get Before Amazon Bans Your Account? No one knows for sure

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Pardus said:
If your returns equate to more than 20% of the total volume purchased in any given month, then you are on Amazon's radar. If this continues for more than 3 months in a row, you may get banned.
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That doesn't make a lick of sense. 🙂

Make no other purchases except to buy and return 1 shirt per month for 3 months in a row will get you banned?

Amazon banning customers has always seemed like a silly internet overreaction to me. There is a certain percentage of fraudsters and policy abusers that will be necessarily be dealt with, everyone else won't have an issue.
 
SparkyJJO said:
That reminds me I did return a shirt because it was too big, but I ordered the same shirt in the next size down. The one I returned was still sealed in the package because I had ordered two of that shirt and I just kept the too big one I had already opened and worn (I washed it and gave it to my dad).
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They don't seem to mind loaning out clothes.

Every once in a while when it's time to replace a lot of clothing I'll order maybe $2,000 worth of various sizes and styles of the same items knowing that I'll return 2/3rds of it after trying it on. When they advertise free return shipping on clothing and accessories they clearly encourage this type of shopping.
 
I don't normally have a lot of returns, but at this point, I'm very hesitant to order anything from their warehouse deals. Of the warehouse deal items I've bought, I've had to return a number of them. Always for things such as wrong item sent, broken, or missing parts. I'd rather not get my account banned for buying warehouse items, that Amazon isn't checking properly.
 
Sometimes with Amazon prime I order items one by one on purpose so they have to send out each item in a separate box!

That what I did with my Surface 3 and PlayStation 4 before returning it for a full refund.
 
Humpy said:
They don't seem to mind loaning out clothes.

Every once in a while when it's time to replace a lot of clothing I'll order maybe $2,000 worth of various sizes and styles of the same items knowing that I'll return 2/3rds of it after trying it on. When they advertise free return shipping on clothing and accessories they clearly encourage this type of shopping.
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I can't say I do it at that scale, but I definitely do that myself. Clothing is tough, especially shoes, but they really do seem to encourage it.
 
I'm getting very selective about buying big ticket PC hardware or electronics from Amazon. I've returned enough stuff in the past that if I end up not wanting/liking what I ordered I just sell it on Amazon for a loss just so I don't add to my return total. That doesn't happen often. Now if its flat our not working/defective I will send it back.
 
I was banned from a furniture store once...seriously. Back when water beds were more popular, my mattress sprung a leak at the seal within the 2 year warranty, replaced it and it leaked within 2 weeks, another replacement and it leaked...again at the seal, in same time frame...they then tried to accuse me of jumping on it..etc to which I didn't but they banned me and refuse further service. They go treat shitty about it, then they tried to say it was full of pinholes...whatever. Though I didn't abuse the warranty with any purpose, their shit was literally just junk.
 
zerocool84 said:
I've only ever returned one thing to Amazon ever. I don't buy things online that I don't need or research before I buy.
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I have an aeropress coffee maker that I use daily, but it gets old having to heat up the water, do the manual process every hour to make a full cup of coffee, so I went on amazon.com and bought a 4 cup coffee maker thinking it would be enough to last me all morning.

WRONG. It's a 4 liquid cup machine, not a 4 coffee cup machine. DOH, dumb mistake, but 4 "cups" of coffee in that machine was about 1.2 coffee cups of coffee which did me no good.

Didn't return it though. I used it two times and got pissed off and put it in storage. It will come in handy sometime when I travel or whatever.
 
Schmide said:
Seem pretty obvious. 37/343 = 10.8%
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Yeah... I'd bet that 10% would be a good threshold for "active" customers that buy more than 100 items a year.

Losing your amazon gift card balance is BS, though. They should have to refund that if they're suspending your account. I hope that guy lawyered up after he read that.

It's going to make me think twice before leaving a big gift card balance in my account, anyway.
 
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what are you guys buying that you return so many things? I've rarely had to return anything to any store. I could probably count my fingers the amount of things I have returned in my whole life.

Although my latest rifle buying experience has sucked - returned 3 guns in as many weeks (2 from same manufacturer and 1 from a different 1). still waiting for a good one. next one is supposed to be arriving today.
 
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ive only returned broken things. as in things that arrive broken (this is UPS fault always) most I don't even have to open as the boxes were run over with something
 
Only done 3 returns, 2 on DOA parts, and one was a multi-function switch for my Ranger. They sent the A part number instead of the B model. My truck needed the B model. They sent the replacement next day the part for my trouble.
 
Have hundreds of purchases and can't recall returning anything.
I do, however, have 2-3 items I need to return, but probably won't because I don't care enough.
 
pontifex said:
what are you guys buying that you return so many things? I've rarely had to return anything to any store. I could probably count my fingers the amount of things I have returned in my whole life.

Although my latest rifle buying experience has sucked - returned 3 guns in as many weeks (2 from same manufacturer and 1 from a different 1). still waiting for a good one. next one is supposed to be arriving today.
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I think it's just a different mentality. I'm like you, almost never return anything. Even if something is clearly defective, I sometimes won't bother returning it, and just won't buy from that store/person any more.

Some people return stuff regularly. I'd guess that I'm far more hesitant to buy something in the first place than they are, I've had stuff sit in an amazon cart for months while I decided if I really wanted it.

To be clear, I don't think that people that return a lot of stuff are scammers or assholes or anything like that. My style is just different.
 
Blackjack200 said:
I think it's just a different mentality. I'm like you, almost never return anything. Even if something is clearly defective, I sometimes won't bother returning it, and just won't buy from that store/person any more.

Some people return stuff regularly. I'd guess that I'm far more hesitant to buy something in the first place than they are, I've had stuff sit in an amazon cart for months while I decided if I really wanted it.

To be clear, I don't think that people that return a lot of stuff are scammers or assholes or anything like that. My style is just different.
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If somethings defective from the get go or breaks shortly after due to no fault of my own, then I'll return it. That just rarely happens. Maybe because I do spend a lot of time researching my purchases. Kind of have to when money's tight. It can be a bit frustrating at times!
 
I've returned 3 or 4 pair of shoes to Amazon - over the course of .... 2 years? -for being small. No repercussions. Amazon makes it so easy. I have 2 new pairs in boxes still, that I didn't return in time, that I cannot wear. All my shoe purchases went sour. I was about to give up online shoe-buying.

Eventually I figured out my footses are size 13, despite the fact that I wear shoes labeled 11 or 11.5. :\ Helps to measure the foot and pick the size off the chart.
 
I've been a prime member for a while and the last return I made was because I ordered an extra by mistake and they just told me to keep it and refunded my money. (was only $20 worth in value).

Yay for amazing service.
 
HeXen said:
Back when water beds were more popular,
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No worries. The furniture store went out of business decades ago.

I only buy 2-4 items a year from Amazon. Never returned anything.

I guess I just don't a whole lot of crap to consider returning. Pretty much I'm not an impulse buyer.

I'm about to return my first item purchased from LL Bean. The comforter cover developed a dime size hole. Only 5 months old. Decided to wait until the cold weather was gone, hole or not.
 
pontifex said:
what are you guys buying that you return so many things? I've rarely had to return anything to any store. I could probably count my fingers the amount of things I have returned in my whole life.

Although my latest rifle buying experience has sucked - returned 3 guns in as many weeks (2 from same manufacturer and 1 from a different 1). still waiting for a good one. next one is supposed to be arriving today.
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PlayStation 4 and Surface 3
 
madoka said:
I think I spend about $25K per year at Amazon for personal items. I've never returned an item as it would cost me more to make the trip to the PO than to just keep it. I have complained about lost packages twice. Once with DHL and once with Ontrac, the two shadiest delivery companies out there. Ontrac listed my item as delivered, but if you went to their page, it said "delivery exception" which was their code for that the item was delivered to the wrong address.

This thread reminded me of the outrage of this poster over having been banned for life from Amazon:

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...e-forever-because-of-too-many-returns.552203/

Eventually he admits that he returned $12,000-$14,000 worth of Macbook Pros for minor screen defects, which IMHO, justifies the ban.
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Why would you go to the post office when you can leave it on the doorstep and have UPS come get it?
 
I wasn't paying attention at the time, but 10 returns over the span of 4 months got me permabanned.

Once they do it, I heard it was impossible to reverse. It was certainly true. They are trained to be totally unforgiving.
 
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