Banned from Amazon.com?!

[LarryG]

They had not expired, nor had they lost any of their value. I was pretty shocked...

Many will be aware that there is a growing backlash against the practice of charging "service fees" on unused gift card balances, and I must say I'm in agreement. The company has your money, in their bank account, they're paying you no interest, they're not sending you monthly or quarterly or even annual statements ... but for some reason they need to charge a monthly service fee to keep track of two fields (a PIN number and a dollar value) on a server somewhere? C'mon.

Lowe's and Home Depot take a lot of flak around here, and sometimes rightly so, but they both deserve a thumbs up for their gift card policies: no fees, no expiration dates.

[Davey]

Appeal

davidtu,

Did you get any feedback on your appeal?

[davidtu]

Here is a crazy thought: log onto your amazon account and see if it is actually locked or has any notes on it.

We can come up with all sorts of conjecture and bad mouth amazon all day but until we know if this email is ligit none of it means anything.

Its for real, the accounts is "on hold" whatever that means. I guess that is all regular CS can say.. I am waiting still (having called back today again) to hear from the Account Specialists.

But it is for real for sure.

[davidtu]

The Consumerist.com is already carrying the story.

http://consumerist.com/5044959/amazo...ounts-en-masse

I have also at this point submitted it as a story idea to the local Seattle Times & PI newspapers as a potential "new news item". Hopefully they will find interest in the story being that Amazon is a local company here.

When I gather more energy I will go to my old standby of emailing Jeff Bezos. This has in the past resulted in Amazon doing the right thing.

I'll update here if I learn anything more. Anyone else on BT3 get the axe?