Amazon Is Banning Customers Who Return Too Many Items

We’ve all felt buyer’s remorse from time to time, but returning too many items to Amazon could get you banned from the e-commerce platform, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Amazon hasn’t specified how many returns is too many, but anecdotal reports from several blacklisted customers have surfaced recently. One customer, Nir Nissim, said Amazon notified him that he had been banned for this reason, even though he had returned just five items over a two-year period. However, his account was reactivated after making several calls to Amazon and emailing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos directly.

As spotted by Time magazine, several other customers have taken to Twitter to complain about the policy.

Amazon said in a statement that these types of bans are rare and urged customers to contact the company directly if they feel a mistake was made. Former Amazon employees said customers can be banned for abusing the company’s return policy, which could mean returning the wrong item or simply returning too many items.

The policy isn't new. In 2016, a computer programmer was banned from the service and had his gift card balance revoked after returning 37 faulty items between 2014 and 2016, The Guardian reported. He had purchased 343 items in total.

[h/t USA Today]