An Open Letter to Amazon.com

[vipgelsi]

amazon implementing = BTC going to 50$

Try $500

[snappa4ever]

The one other time I've suffered a significant theft loss was a few years ago when I sold a 30' camping trailer to a young man in the construction industry. He paid $4,000 of the $10,000 purchase price up front, but then after a couple monthly payments he vanished leaving me out $5,000. My attempts to trace his nomadic path were fruitless. (Closest I came was talking to a former landlady who told me "If you find him, let me know. I am trying to serve papers to him myself for property damage!") I still have title to the trailer, so it's conceivable that at some point he'll sell it, and then the subsequent purchaser will discover I have the title. Would it be fair to him at that point to demand an extra $5,000 or I'm confiscating the property he paid for?

Several posters here seem to suggest I'd have that legal right, but it doesn't sit right with me at all. Emotionally I wrote off the loss a long time ago. Unless I found evidence the buyer was conspiring with some knowledge to take advantage of the situation I'd not burden them with any ugly surprises.

It doesn't sit right with me at all, either.  It is how things work, though.  There was an article on the front page of Yahoo! again today about someone getting a car back that was stolen years ago.  The car was captured by customs on the way out to the Netherlands, and the buyer in the Netherlands is certainly out the funds spent to buy the car.  What really bothers me about this kind of situation is that, at least in the US, "receiving stolen property" is against the law, and I'm afraid there are plenty of innocent people being punished for that crime simply because they made the mistake of trusting a scammer/thief.  To that end, sadly, you should be thankful that Amazon doesn't do something so unthinkable as to press charges against recipients of gift cards purchased with stolen credit cards.

I think this is exactly why people should do a better job to make sure the person you are buying something from is actually the legal owner of the property you are buying. This is not something the OP did, not is it something that the buyer of the car did in your article. Although it would have been easier for the person in your yahoo article to verify the chain of title the OP could have easily (and should have) asked for some kind of documentation that the gift cards were purchased legitimately and when the balances were zeroed out he could give such evidence to amazon to get them to restore the balances

[ebliever]

The one other time I've suffered a significant theft loss was a few years ago when I sold a 30' camping trailer to a young man in the construction industry. He paid $4,000 of the $10,000 purchase price up front, but then after a couple monthly payments he vanished leaving me out $5,000. My attempts to trace his nomadic path were fruitless. (Closest I came was talking to a former landlady who told me "If you find him, let me know. I am trying to serve papers to him myself for property damage!") I still have title to the trailer, so it's conceivable that at some point he'll sell it, and then the subsequent purchaser will discover I have the title. Would it be fair to him at that point to demand an extra $5,000 or I'm confiscating the property he paid for?

Several posters here seem to suggest I'd have that legal right, but it doesn't sit right with me at all. Emotionally I wrote off the loss a long time ago. Unless I found evidence the buyer was conspiring with some knowledge to take advantage of the situation I'd not burden them with any ugly surprises.

It doesn't sit right with me at all, either.  It is how things work, though.  There was an article on the front page of Yahoo! again today about someone getting a car back that was stolen years ago.  The car was captured by customs on the way out to the Netherlands, and the buyer in the Netherlands is certainly out the funds spent to buy the car.  What really bothers me about this kind of situation is that, at least in the US, "receiving stolen property" is against the law, and I'm afraid there are plenty of innocent people being punished for that crime simply because they made the mistake of trusting a scammer/thief.  To that end, sadly, you should be thankful that Amazon doesn't do something so unthinkable as to press charges against recipients of gift cards purchased with stolen credit cards.

I think this is exactly why people should do a better job to make sure the person you are buying something from is actually the legal owner of the property you are buying. This is not something the OP did, not is it something that the buyer of the car did in your article. Although it would have been easier for the person in your yahoo article to verify the chain of title the OP could have easily (and should have) asked for some kind of documentation that the gift cards were purchased legitimately and when the balances were zeroed out he could give such evidence to amazon to get them to restore the balances

Amazon is refusing to restore the balances despite my attempts to provide such evidence. They don't care. They won't even provide an explanation for their revokation of the gift cards, despite it being my account that is the one affected.

I'm not going to sue (amount too modest, would just make lawyers rich and goes against my grain), but suppose someone in this situation wanted to sue - they'd be launching a suit completely in the dark. It would require substantial discovery/investigation prying the details out of Amazon as to what is even going on. Only the lawyers would benefit.

Hopefully Amazon has good reason(s) for taking the actions they have done. Hopefully what they are doing is legal and involves a specific, correct decision for each separate gift card. Hopefully not too many other innocent people are getting ripped off (a purpose of this thread). And I hope that anyone else in a similar situation either avoids Amazon in the future (I'll be looking into shutting down my ~17 year old account with them shortly), or won't suffer further collateral damage from future decisions Amazon makes regarding their account.

[zorke]

Amazon is refusing to restore the balances despite my attempts to provide such evidence. They don't care. They won't even provide an explanation for their revokation of the gift cards, despite it being my account that is the one affected.
......
Hopefully Amazon has good reason(s) for taking the actions they have done. Hopefully what they are doing is legal and involves a specific, correct decision for each separate gift card. Hopefully not too many other innocent people are getting ripped off (a purpose of this thread). And I hope that anyone else in a similar situation either avoids Amazon in the future (I'll be looking into shutting down my ~17 year old account with them shortly), or won't suffer further collateral damage from future decisions Amazon makes regarding their account.

These two paragraphs contradict each-other. Your first statement implies that you have evidence the gift cards were purchased via legitimate means (you do not), meaning not by a stolen credit card. Your second statement admits that you do not know one way or another if the gift cards were legitimately purchased or not.

Even if only a certain number of your gift cards were purchased with credit cards reported to be stolen, it does not mean they should not revoke all of the balances on all of your gift cards. Say for example you loaded balances from 25 gift cards onto your account and all 25 were purchased with different credit cards. This alone is very suspicious. Lets say that out of those 25 gift cards, 20 were purchased with credit cards that were reported stolen and the purchase of the gift card was reported as unauthorized. (you should remember that a card holder may not realize right away when their credit card is stolen and may not notice unauthorized transactions on their account until a long time after the charge shows up to their account - they have 60 days from the date of their statement to report a mistake on their account). Do you think it would be wise to revoke the other 5 gift cards as an abundance of caution, and refund the payment method used to pay for the gift cards? I would certainly say this would be a good business decision (and an ethical one).

[ebliever]

Amazon is refusing to restore the balances despite my attempts to provide such evidence. They don't care. They won't even provide an explanation for their revokation of the gift cards, despite it being my account that is the one affected.
......
Hopefully Amazon has good reason(s) for taking the actions they have done. Hopefully what they are doing is legal and involves a specific, correct decision for each separate gift card. Hopefully not too many other innocent people are getting ripped off (a purpose of this thread). And I hope that anyone else in a similar situation either avoids Amazon in the future (I'll be looking into shutting down my ~17 year old account with them shortly), or won't suffer further collateral damage from future decisions Amazon makes regarding their account.

These two paragraphs contradict each-other. Your first statement implies that you have evidence the gift cards were purchased via legitimate means (you do not), meaning not by a stolen credit card. Your second statement admits that you do not know one way or another if the gift cards were legitimately purchased or not.

Even if only a certain number of your gift cards were purchased with credit cards reported to be stolen, it does not mean they should not revoke all of the balances on all of your gift cards. Say for example you loaded balances from 25 gift cards onto your account and all 25 were purchased with different credit cards. This alone is very suspicious. Lets say that out of those 25 gift cards, 20 were purchased with credit cards that were reported stolen and the purchase of the gift card was reported as unauthorized. (you should remember that a card holder may not realize right away when their credit card is stolen and may not notice unauthorized transactions on their account until a long time after the charge shows up to their account - they have 60 days from the date of their statement to report a mistake on their account). Do you think it would be wise to revoke the other 5 gift cards as an abundance of caution, and refund the payment method used to pay for the gift cards? I would certainly say this would be a good business decision (and an ethical one).

My apologies for the lack of clarity, but you've misunderstood me. I was referring to my own payment for the cards in the first sentence. But in your second paragraph, you seem to be saying that a legitimate purchaser of cards (via 3rd party) should have all their funds revoked if some of the cards are not legit. Do you have any idea how outrageous that sounds to a victim like myself? Do you understand that saying you'd refund the payment method used to pay for the cards for the legit cards, that means the purchasers on Purse get their money back, but not I who paid them in bitcoin? So then they get a nice windfall, but I'm shafted by Amazon yet further for legit cards that I purchased! How is victimizing me further supposed to improve the situation? That's not ethical, and would be an outrageous and offensive decision.

[zorke]

Amazon is refusing to restore the balances despite my attempts to provide such evidence. They don't care. They won't even provide an explanation for their revokation of the gift cards, despite it being my account that is the one affected.
......
Hopefully Amazon has good reason(s) for taking the actions they have done. Hopefully what they are doing is legal and involves a specific, correct decision for each separate gift card. Hopefully not too many other innocent people are getting ripped off (a purpose of this thread). And I hope that anyone else in a similar situation either avoids Amazon in the future (I'll be looking into shutting down my ~17 year old account with them shortly), or won't suffer further collateral damage from future decisions Amazon makes regarding their account.

These two paragraphs contradict each-other. Your first statement implies that you have evidence the gift cards were purchased via legitimate means (you do not), meaning not by a stolen credit card. Your second statement admits that you do not know one way or another if the gift cards were legitimately purchased or not.

Even if only a certain number of your gift cards were purchased with credit cards reported to be stolen, it does not mean they should not revoke all of the balances on all of your gift cards. Say for example you loaded balances from 25 gift cards onto your account and all 25 were purchased with different credit cards. This alone is very suspicious. Lets say that out of those 25 gift cards, 20 were purchased with credit cards that were reported stolen and the purchase of the gift card was reported as unauthorized. (you should remember that a card holder may not realize right away when their credit card is stolen and may not notice unauthorized transactions on their account until a long time after the charge shows up to their account - they have 60 days from the date of their statement to report a mistake on their account). Do you think it would be wise to revoke the other 5 gift cards as an abundance of caution, and refund the payment method used to pay for the gift cards? I would certainly say this would be a good business decision (and an ethical one).

My apologies for the lack of clarity, but you've misunderstood me. I was referring to my own payment for the cards in the first sentence. But in your second paragraph, you seem to be saying that a legitimate purchaser of cards (via 3rd party) should have all their funds revoked if some of the cards are not legit. Do you have any idea how outrageous that sounds to a victim like myself? Do you understand that saying you'd refund the payment method used to pay for the cards for the legit cards, that means the purchasers on Purse get their money back, but not I who paid them in bitcoin? So then they get a nice windfall, but I'm shafted by Amazon yet further for legit cards that I purchased! How is victimizing me further supposed to improve the situation? That's not ethical, and would be an outrageous and offensive decision.

I am saying that if 80% of gift cards were purchased with cards that were reported stolen then the chances are the other 20% of gift cards were stolen as well (but have yet to be reported). From a risk management side, if there are a lot of gift cards purchased with different credit cards, there is a very big risk that they were all stolen.

I am not saying that if the cards were purchased via legit means (originally - how your purchased them does not matter) then the value should be revoked. I am saying that if there is a good chance the card was not purchased by legit means (from amazon) then the value should be revoked.

Amazon gift cards are not designed to be traded in this fashion. There are some gift card retailers that likely earn a few percent "commission" from selling their gift cards, however amazon never intended for their gift cards to be used as a currency.

[The00Dustin]

Amazon gift cards are not designed to be traded in this fashion. There are some gift card retailers that likely earn a few percent "commission" from selling their gift cards, however amazon never intended for their gift cards to be used as a currency.

This is a very valid point, actually.  Long before purse existed, when people were selling Amazon gift cards and shopping services on bitmit, I chatted with Amazon support about this, because I was concerned something like this could happen, and Amazon talked me out of even considering it as an option.  They may have even recommended against paying a third party to send a gift via Amazon, and definitely couldn't (or wouldn't) provide confirmation on how such a scenario would be dealt with if the order of the gift was determined to be fraudulent after delivery.

ETA: IOW, the best way to avoid this would have been to talk to Amazon about it (not about BTC, just about buying gift cards if they turned out to be fraudulently obtained) instead of "testing the waters" yourself, which required relying on some assumptions that turned out to be wong.  Unfortunately, in that regard, what you have here is a very expensive lesson.

[ebliever]

Amazon gift cards are not designed to be traded in this fashion. There are some gift card retailers that likely earn a few percent "commission" from selling their gift cards, however amazon never intended for their gift cards to be used as a currency.

This is a very valid point, actually.  Long before purse existed, when people were selling Amazon gift cards and shopping services on bitmit, I chatted with Amazon support about this, because I was concerned something like this could happen, and Amazon talked me out of even considering it as an option.  They may have even recommended against paying a third party to send a gift via Amazon, and definitely couldn't (or wouldn't) provide confirmation on how such a scenario would be dealt with if the order of the gift was determined to be fraudulent after delivery.

ETA: IOW, the best way to avoid this would have been to talk to Amazon about it (not about BTC, just about buying gift cards if they turned out to be fraudulently obtained) instead of "testing the waters" yourself, which required relying on some assumptions that turned out to be wong.  Unfortunately, in that regard, what you have here is a very expensive lesson.

True. I did actually talk to Amazon a time or two in the July timeframe relating to a specific transaction or two, but didn't plainly ask them about the whole subject. If I were Amazon I would have this in their Gift Card FAQs warning about risks of 3rd-party gift card sales and outlining what can happen (such as in this case).

[ebliever]

I am not saying that if the cards were purchased via legit means (originally - how your purchased them does not matter) then the value should be revoked. I am saying that if there is a good chance the card was not purchased by legit means (from amazon) then the value should be revoked.

I still don't understand. We're in agreement on your first sentence in the quote above, but then in your second sentence I perceive a contradiction because your threshhold for revoking a card is "a good chance" (i.e., less then 100%). That means that some percentage of the time a cards funds would be revoked despite being legitimately purchased, due to a premature judgment on Amazon's part.

All I'm saying is that a revocation should be based on specific evidence for each specific transaction. What I think might make more sense (and perhaps fit what you have in mind) would be a temporary hold on an account with a given level of suspicious/confirmed fraudulent activity, until things can be sorted out for each card. I'd be fine with that, pending the outcome of further investigation. But it doesn't look like that's how Amazon operates.

[turvarya]

I did the same thing on purse. Today I got an E-Mail from Amazon,saying  that a gift card i used is invalid, but there was no invalid gift card in my account. So, I wrote them a Request, what there E-Mail is supposed to mean. They just answered, they made an error sending that mail and I don't have to do anything further.
I send them another E-Mail, if any of the gift cards I got via wishlist are invalid. They told me they are sorry for being not specific at first, but the gift card can not be redeemed because there are abnormalities and they can not give me any data about the purchaser. so, basically telling me the opposite of what they said in the first place and still not giving any specific information(what gift card they are talking about)
So, I wrote a third request, telling them, they should tell me which gift cards are invalid(Code and OrderID).

So far, Amazon Customer Support sucks ass.

[murraypaul]

True. I did actually talk to Amazon a time or two in the July timeframe relating to a specific transaction or two, but didn't plainly ask them about the whole subject. If I were Amazon I would have this in their Gift Card FAQs warning about risks of 3rd-party gift card sales and outlining what can happen (such as in this case).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=3122091

Limitations.
Gift Cards may not be redeemed for the purchase of products at www.amazon.at, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.es, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.com.mx, www.amazon.co.uk, or any other website owned and operated by us, our affiliates, or any other person or entity, except as indicated by these terms and conditions. Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase other gift cards. Gift Cards cannot be reloaded, resold, transferred for value or redeemed for cash, except to the extent required by law. Unused Gift Card balances in an Amazon.com account may not be transferred to another Amazon.com account.

By reselling your gifts cards on eBay, you have violated the terms and conditions.

[turvarya]

Customer Service phoned me. They told me, all my gift cards are valid and the E-Mails(2 out of 3) were wrong. They said, they wrote a lot of wrong E-Mails recently.
They also told me, I can not see, if a gift card is valid, before I redeem it, which sucks, since I planned to get rid of my gift cards over the next couple of months and not that early. That would mean, I have to redeem them all to be sure, none of them gets invalid over time and can not give them to other people.

[BitCoinDream]

Can someone please tell me what is the purpose of writing Open Letter to Amazon in Bitcointalk ? Should not it go under Amazon's forum ?

[turvarya]

True. I did actually talk to Amazon a time or two in the July timeframe relating to a specific transaction or two, but didn't plainly ask them about the whole subject. If I were Amazon I would have this in their Gift Card FAQs warning about risks of 3rd-party gift card sales and outlining what can happen (such as in this case).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=3122091

Limitations.
Gift Cards may not be redeemed for the purchase of products at www.amazon.at, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.es, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.com.mx, www.amazon.co.uk, or any other website owned and operated by us, our affiliates, or any other person or entity, except as indicated by these terms and conditions. Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase other gift cards. Gift Cards cannot be reloaded, resold, transferred for value or redeemed for cash, except to the extent required by law. Unused Gift Card balances in an Amazon.com account may not be transferred to another Amazon.com account.

By reselling your gifts cards on eBay, you have violated the terms and conditions.

I don't know about US-Law, but I am pretty sure, that they can not forbid you from reselling gift cards in the EU.

Can someone please tell me what is the purpose of writing Open Letter to Amazon in Bitcointalk ? Should not it go under Amazon's forum ?

could you please tell me, why you don't read the whole thread before commenting on it? OP already answered that.

[professionalboatmisser]

amazon implementing = BTC going to 50$

If amazon does not keep the BTC, the price could drop. If amazon pay staff salary with BTC, the price will rise.

Salaries in BTC is what we need precisely for BTC not to crash. But do you realistically see them or anyone paying salaries in BTC? and people accepting salaries in BTC, when the price is volatile as fuck? Im not sure about this just yet.

[ebliever]

Limitations.
Gift Cards may not be redeemed for the purchase of products at www.amazon.at, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.es, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.com.mx, www.amazon.co.uk, or any other website owned and operated by us, our affiliates, or any other person or entity, except as indicated by these terms and conditions. Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase other gift cards. Gift Cards cannot be reloaded, resold, transferred for value or redeemed for cash, except to the extent required by law. Unused Gift Card balances in an Amazon.com account may not be transferred to another Amazon.com account.

By reselling your gifts cards on eBay, you have violated the terms and conditions.

I don't think your interpretation is accurate here. I've reviewed those terms and taken note of them, and in all my conversations and emails with Amazon it's never come up that gift cards can't or shouldn't be resold. You've ignored the "except to the extent required by law" which I believe covers that.

I've read enough threads here and elsewhere on the subject of selling Amazon gift cards that I'm reasonably certain that someone somewhere would have made this same point many times over if it were valid. Come to think of it, Ebay itself has all kinds of warnings and restrictions on gift cards, so it's pretty obvious that they'd ban the resale of Amazon gift cards if your claim was correct.

[ebliever]

Customer Service phoned me. They told me, all my gift cards are valid and the E-Mails(2 out of 3) were wrong. They said, they wrote a lot of wrong E-Mails recently.
They also told me, I can not see, if a gift card is valid, before I redeem it, which sucks, since I planned to get rid of my gift cards over the next couple of months and not that early. That would mean, I have to redeem them all to be sure, none of them gets invalid over time and can not give them to other people.

If I were you I'd use them pronto. This is troubling news and suggests they are having trouble ID'ing legit and suspicious cards and are acting erratically as a result, not just internally but in their customer communications. Not good. It goes back to what I was saying about not being able to trust them any more.

How hard could it really be for them to enable a feature that lets people check a gift card's balance without adding it to their account? People have been asking for that all over, I've noticed, and I don't see what the downside could be.

[turvarya]

Customer Service phoned me. They told me, all my gift cards are valid and the E-Mails(2 out of 3) were wrong. They said, they wrote a lot of wrong E-Mails recently.
They also told me, I can not see, if a gift card is valid, before I redeem it, which sucks, since I planned to get rid of my gift cards over the next couple of months and not that early. That would mean, I have to redeem them all to be sure, none of them gets invalid over time and can not give them to other people.

If I were you I'd use them pronto. This is troubling news and suggests they are having trouble ID'ing legit and suspicious cards and are acting erratically as a result, not just internally but in their customer communications. Not good. It goes back to what I was saying about not being able to trust them any more.

How hard could it really be for them to enable a feature that lets people check a gift card's balance without adding it to their account? People have been asking for that all over, I've noticed, and I don't see what the downside could be.

I know, I will redeem all of them and use them, but I have about € 1.500 in gift cards. That will take time.

It's obvious, why they don't give that option. They just want to make selling them less comfortable, since they can't really forbid it

[snappa4ever]

Limitations.
Gift Cards may not be redeemed for the purchase of products at www.amazon.at, www.amazon.com.br, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.es, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.in, www.amazon.it, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.com.mx, www.amazon.co.uk, or any other website owned and operated by us, our affiliates, or any other person or entity, except as indicated by these terms and conditions. Gift Cards cannot be used to purchase other gift cards. Gift Cards cannot be reloaded, resold, transferred for value or redeemed for cash, except to the extent required by law. Unused Gift Card balances in an Amazon.com account may not be transferred to another Amazon.com account.

By reselling your gifts cards on eBay, you have violated the terms and conditions.

I don't think your interpretation is accurate here. I've reviewed those terms and taken note of them, and in all my conversations and emails with Amazon it's never come up that gift cards can't or shouldn't be resold. You've ignored the "except to the extent required by law" which I believe covers that.

I've read enough threads here and elsewhere on the subject of selling Amazon gift cards that I'm reasonably certain that someone somewhere would have made this same point many times over if it were valid. Come to think of it, Ebay itself has all kinds of warnings and restrictions on gift cards, so it's pretty obvious that they'd ban the resale of Amazon gift cards if your claim was correct.

The extent as required by law means that the law explicitly says it is okay to sell your gift cards (or more commonly to transfer their value to someone else). The lack of a law forbidding it would not cover this.

To the extent required by law

[bitllionaire]

I think Amazon is not going to adopt bitcoin in the close time
there is no evidence or good words about bitcoin in any of his important people