An Open Letter to Amazon.com

[ticoti]

Is there any comment from any of the amazon directives about bitcoin?

[Window2Wall]

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

I don't think they will actively try to stop the trading of gift cards but will certainly not support either buyers nor sellers of gift cards in the event of a dispute.

However in clear instances of you buying gift cards they do have a legit reason to void the balances of all your gift cards when several are loaded to your account that were purchased with stolen credit cards

[turvarya]

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

No, there doesn't have to be an explicit law about gift cards. There also is not a law, that forbids you explicitly from stealing a car, but a law, that forbids you from stealing stuff.
It's in your right to resell your stuff. The only thing, Amazon really could do, is to bind a gift card to a buyer, which they won't do, since gift cards are meant as gifts.

[Jamacn]

Has not seen any actions by Amazon

[vipgelsi]

I guess they are waiting for coinbase to wake up.

[lucasjkr]

So, essentially, someone used a stolen credit card to buy an amazon gift card, which they then traded to you for bitcoins? And once amazon learned that they weren't being paid for the gift card I question, they should continue to honor it?

Sorry, but no. Amazon shouldn't have to take the loss simply because you bought fraudently obtained gift cards via bitcoin. That you didn't know they were fraudulently obtained doesn't make a difference or mean that they should have to make you whole.

[lucasjkr]

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.

What it comes down to is that you should never sell an item that can not be taken back (a bitcoin) for something that can be reversed (a credit card payment, gift card, etc)

That's been discussed in great detail many a time on this forum and plenty of other places too.

You tried to do an end run around that, and in doing tow, expected amazon to assume the liability that should have been on your shoulders in the first place. Would you have sold your bitcoins to someone for a direct credit card payment (say, with a square credit card reader)? Would you have sold them to someone who would only pay via paypal? Likely no to both of those, since you could have done so rather than using purse.

Sorry you lost your coins, but you can't expect amazon to let you Spend money on a gift card that they haven't been paid for. That you resold the card doesn't doesn't matter to the  either.

[98problems]

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

No, there doesn't have to be an explicit law about gift cards. There also is not a law, that forbids you explicitly from stealing a car, but a law, that forbids you from stealing stuff.
It's in your right to resell your stuff. The only thing, Amazon really could do, is to bind a gift card to a buyer, which they won't do, since gift cards are meant as gifts.

Yes there does need to be a law that specifically allows the sale of gift cards (or something broad enough to cover gift cards). Using your example, the reason it is illegal to steal a car is because there is a law, grand theft auto (this is what it is called in many states), that forbids stealing cars. There is a law against stealing goods, larceny (this is what this is called in many states and the crime is generally different then stealing a car). Conversely there are some states that have passed laws that make it illegal for a company to prohibit the transfer of value of their gift cards, essentially making it a requirement by law that a gift card can be sold/transferred

[turvarya]

So, essentially, someone used a stolen credit card to buy an amazon gift card, which they then traded to you for bitcoins? And once amazon learned that they weren't being paid for the gift card I question, they should continue to honor it?

Sorry, but no. Amazon shouldn't have to take the loss simply because you bought fraudently obtained gift cards via bitcoin. That you didn't know they were fraudulently obtained doesn't make a difference or mean that they should have to make you whole.

I am not sure about that, but doesn't the credit card or the owner of the credit card lose money?
If someone steals your credit card and pays for stuff with it, it is either covered by the credit card insurance or the owner of it has to pay. I don't think, that the credit card company just reverses the transaction. In this case the vendor would lose money, who is least responsible.
I thought this insurance is one of the reasons for the high credit card fees.

[a447513372]

So, essentially, someone used a stolen credit card to buy an amazon gift card, which they then traded to you for bitcoins? And once amazon learned that they weren't being paid for the gift card I question, they should continue to honor it?

Sorry, but no. Amazon shouldn't have to take the loss simply because you bought fraudently obtained gift cards via bitcoin. That you didn't know they were fraudulently obtained doesn't make a difference or mean that they should have to make you whole.

I am not sure about that, but doesn't the credit card or the owner of the credit card lose money?
If someone steals your credit card and pays for stuff with it, it is either covered by the credit card insurance or the owner of it has to pay. I don't think, that the credit card company just reverses the transaction. In this case the vendor would lose money, who is least responsible.
I thought this insurance is one of the reasons for the high credit card fees.

The card holder is only responsible for a nominal amount ($50 however most banks waive this) if their card is stolen. It is not the bank's fault if a merchant is lax about people being able to use credits cards anon (encouraging the use of stolen credit cards) and is the responsibility of the merchant to have procedures in place that prevent people from using a stolen card, and when someone does use the stolen card to be able to identify the person using the stolen card

[turvarya]

So, essentially, someone used a stolen credit card to buy an amazon gift card, which they then traded to you for bitcoins? And once amazon learned that they weren't being paid for the gift card I question, they should continue to honor it?

Sorry, but no. Amazon shouldn't have to take the loss simply because you bought fraudently obtained gift cards via bitcoin. That you didn't know they were fraudulently obtained doesn't make a difference or mean that they should have to make you whole.

I am not sure about that, but doesn't the credit card or the owner of the credit card lose money?
If someone steals your credit card and pays for stuff with it, it is either covered by the credit card insurance or the owner of it has to pay. I don't think, that the credit card company just reverses the transaction. In this case the vendor would lose money, who is least responsible.
I thought this insurance is one of the reasons for the high credit card fees.

The card holder is only responsible for a nominal amount ($50 however most banks waive this) if their card is stolen. It is not the bank's fault if a merchant is lax about people being able to use credits cards anon (encouraging the use of stolen credit cards) and is the responsibility of the merchant to have procedures in place that prevent people from using a stolen card, and when someone does use the stolen card to be able to identify the person using the stolen card

Is that really a legal description?
If it is, every online vendor shouldn't accept credit cards at all without personally taking a stool sample.

[murraypaul]

If it is, every online vendor shouldn't accept credit cards at all without personally taking a stool sample.

If they didn't accept credit cards, they would lose custom to those stores that did accept them.
Each store has to balance their own risk profile against the lost custom.

[ebliever]

A somewhat happy ending; I've updated response #1 below the OP with this news:

UPDATE 28 Oct. 2014 - Following up with Purse, they have reported back that they will be issuing me a refund of ~0.818 BTC; which as near as I can tell is a full refund allowing for the drop in value of BTC since August. So kudos to Purse, and I hope they are able to recoup any losses from fraudulent users.

Others in a similar situation have also reported compensation from Purse, so Purse deserves some plaudits. I just hope Amazon is not effectively shortchanging them.

[Eisenhower34]

A somewhat happy ending; I've updated response #1 below the OP with this news:

UPDATE 28 Oct. 2014 - Following up with Purse, they have reported back that they will be issuing me a refund of ~0.818 BTC; which as near as I can tell is a full refund allowing for the drop in value of BTC since August. So kudos to Purse, and I hope they are able to recoup any losses from fraudulent users.

Others in a similar situation have also reported compensation from Purse, so Purse deserves some plaudits. I just hope Amazon is not effectively shortchanging them.

I am very surprised they were able to give you a refund as I would think this would be near impossible to prove. If they are giving out refunds for these kinds of things then they will likely go bankrupt very quickly.

I do agree however that you were dealing with the wrong entity (amazon) as they were not a party to your transaction