Uploading $600 using my credit card to my account requires verification I wasn’t aware about.
Sent a $600 gift card to my account to be made for future purchases using my credit card. The transaction on the surface appeared seamless, received an automated email thanking me and informing me that I should see the new/updated account balance within five minutes.<br /><br />That didn’t happen, instead about an hr later I get a call from a Seattle Washington number. Not knowing who it was, but suspecting it may be Amazon I just let my phone buzz. I really do not like answering my phone when I don’t know who or what is on the other end.  Anyway I was left a message that was all but beyond recognizable, the only word I understood was “amazon”. Tried calling back, but of course amazon uses a random phone number generator, so all I get is an automated response telling me the number I dialed isn’t found to be in service.<br /><br />I then try to find someone to contact (is it just me that has a little trouble finding amazon’s CSR information on this site?) after going through a couple of page levels I find the necessary steps that are needed to have someone directly contact me.  I enter my phone number so someone can call me.  I have a tendency to ramble on when it comes to writing/typing a complaint but a bit briefer when talking to an actual human being.  I get another Seattle WA call, this time I answer it straightaway. The person on the other line named “Jeena” sounds friendly enough, but I get a quickly growing suspicion she has an amazon CSR help manual/script along with an Hindi-to-English dictionary in front of her as she is speaking to me.<br /><br />I explain to her everything that had transpired thus far. She expresses her concern but does little to alleviate them or to ameliorate my current situation. Through several distractions on the other end I can barely make heads or tails on what Jeena is trying to convey to me and need to ask several times for clarification. What I gathered from the conversation was the following, that I should see my account updated with the $600 within 12hrs. She also suggested that I try loading an additional smaller amount, like $100 to my account to se if it goes through. I explained that I didn’t feel comfortable sending more currency over into my account when I had the amount that I already sent having not yet gone through. She more or less shared my concerns, but whether or not she was just being sincere or simply parroting is anyone’s guess. I’m going for the latter.<br /><br />Anyway the conversation lasted longer than I would have liked, ended with me getting her name and a promise to have her call me back. That has yet to happen, I’m afraid that my amazon CSR like basically every lady I’ve met has stood me up, lol.<br /><br />So as of 3/12/2019 I haven’t had any updates, with the minor exception of an email from Jeena promising to call me to follow up on seeing whether or not my account reflects the necessary changes.<br /><br />This has been and still is being an aggravating experience. Their is nothing that I could find in the riveting-edge-of-your-seat-easy-to-follow-totally-not-a-boilerplated-lopsided read of their ToS or policies regarding the limit or ammount you could transfer before they get suspicious. I see no reason why, my credit card that I have saved on my own account for quick transactions should have amazon not allowing this to go through.<br /><br />UPDATE: while in the middle of writing this review Jeena called me back. Nothing has yet to be resolved. With a frustrating mixture of trying to calmly as possible voice my frustration while at the same time knowing just how frustrated this has made me I went through basically the same talk I had about 24hrs ago.<br /><br />She explained to me for security reasons that I needed to be verified, though explains nothing of what such a process entails. After explaining to her for the umptieth time that verification isn’t an issue of some arbitrary allotted amount of time but simply of verification I am all but exhausted in this endeavor. I half-jokingly explained after she explained to me Amazon’s reasoning behind this. In the past people hacked into other people accounts to I guess upload gift card amounts then claim said amount was stolen or sent to the wrong account.<br /><br />So basically what I said was “Let me try to understand this. What you’re telling me Jeena is that amazon sees that I sent a $600 amazon gift card using my credit card to my own account, an account I’ve had with the same email address since 2011, and wants to know that I’m actually ‘me’ and not simply pretending to be ‘me’? And in order to verify ‘me’ from ‘me’ some arbitrary amount of time needs to be allotted that somehow gives them the correct answer to my alleged self-identity theft?” Confused? I sure am!<br /><br />Amazon needs to update their policies by giving them crystal clear clarity on the amount you can transfer before they get suspicious. Also the point is ultimately moot, since as I explained to Jeena I could have uploaded the entire amount in increments within 2hrs without amazon freezing my account. Suspiciously high amount of transactions in their (Amazon’s) mind should be no different than smaller ones when it comes to fraudulence. It should be the onus of the customer to contact amazon regarding fraudulent or suspicious activity regarding their own accounts. We should have enough agency & responsibility when it comes to managing our own accounts.<br /><br />I don’t need amazon not telling me how much I can spend, then telling me the amount I transacted using my own card for my own account has enter the level of possible fraudulence. As if there is some actual capstone or touchstone when it comes to when a transaction becomes suspicious or suspected of fraudulence!<br /><br />This has been so far a highly disappointing ordeal:(
Rating: 2 stars