Quote:
Originally Posted by ScalyFreak
Because companies don't piss of their paying customers without good reason. That would be bad for business.
Anyone who has ever worked in Customer Service for a company that does business online has been in a situation where an order or account has been blocked due to account activity that looks exactly like identity theft or credit card fraud. The customer then calls in to Customer Service, and SCREAMS. They cuss, they swear, they threaten chargebacks and legal action, in short, they are furious. 95% of the time, the fraud is real, and since we can't check photo ID over the phone, there is absolutely no way that we are going to lift a security hold off of the account just because a stranger tells us he is honest and we should believe him because he's honest. Screams and threats doesn't change that, neither does threats of lawsuits or of going to the press. Unfortunately, a furious customer refuses to realize this, and these support phone calls hardly ever end well.
In this case, we don't have the whole story. We never will. But it takes two to tango, and two to fight and to keep a fight going, and Amazon, like any other vendor, would not have cut off a consumer who spends $1,000 a year in their store, unless they thought (correctly or incorrectly) they had a good reason for it.
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Well, two things.
First, that line of reasoning was not evident in the posters I was responding to. They were taking the article for what it says and decided the customer is to blame for the company's portrayed bad behavior. Whether it really is bad behavior? Sure, that's an open discussion. But not really pertinent to the mindset I was responding to.
Second, I don't think that's strictly true. Big companies who know their users are either far too loyal or far too locked in to leave can and do take actions that may anger their customers without really caring about it. The company itself doesn't care about the customer service rep who will get yelled at by people who don't understand it's not their fault. They don't care if they make their customers angry - because they know most of them won't leave. Look at Facebook, Windows, and, well... Amazon.
Regardless of if the customer was indeed commiting fraud or some other violation, a couple things strike me as strange.
1. Why no one told her why there was a hold, or got back to her. I've had my bank account locked for suspected fraud before (I withdrew a couple hundred bucks after I landed abroad). But when I called them and asked why my card wasn't working, they told me immediately what the hold was for and why. And it took a few hours to get it removed. Why can't Amazon do the same?
2. If someone is committing fraud and the account they're doing it through is suddenly locked I don't think they'd be shocked. And I certainly don't think they'd post it on the internet, because when the truth came out, they would obviously be the bad guy. Why would someone do that?
Not saying it's not possible - just that this whole situation is screwed up.