Complaint Review: Amazon.com - Seattle WA

My 18-year-old daughter was visiting Rochester, New York for a job interview. Someone stole her wallet, so she called me because she had no money. She ask me to send her some money or she would lose her room at the hotel. I went to Amazon.com and purchased her a Hotels.com gift card for $250 and they were supposed to email it to her within 5 minutes.

Instead, they locked me out of my account and there was a message stating I needed to verify my address and an email telling me how to do this had been sent. I check my inbox an spam folder and their was not such email. So I called Amazon.com and told them it was an emergency and my daughter would be kicked out of her hotel room at 11:30am if she did not receive the card by email.

It was 9:00am when I made the call. They told me the address verification process takes 24 hour. I told them that I already told them I did not receive any email for address verification so may I please talk to a manager. I was put on hold. There manager said he did not believe I had a 18-year-old daughter in New York and that he thought it was sort of suspicious to buy a Hotels.com gift card with my Amazon.com account had been funded with an Amazon Gift Card two month earlier.

He demanded ID verification and asked me to fax him my social security card and drivers license. I did so immediately and he said he would verify my ID and get the Hotels.com gift card to my daughter within an hour. My daughter did not receive the gift card and got kicked out onto the dangerous streets of New York with three big train cases full of luggage. I only had about $20 in the bank so I could not send her anything else.

I kept calling Amazon.com and they would not answer the phone. I thought they might not want to give the gift card to my daughter because they wanted to keep the money, and perhaps they block my number. So I used another cell phone to call them and they answered, then I told them who I was and I got put on hold for hours. So I hung up and called back and they would not answer my new cell phone anymore either.

My daughter looked like easy prey sitting on the corner at night and it was very cold. She ended up accepting a solicitation to sell her body so she could afford a place for the night. Now I am paying for her counseling bill.

I got an email a week later telling me they verified my ID but I had to fax them the receipt and a copy of the gift card if I wanted them to restore my account. I called my friend who gave me the gift card as asked if he could find the receipt. He did and I faxed it to Amazon as requested. I have never heard anything from them again and now when I try to login to my Amazon.com account, instead of getting a message that account is on hold for verification, it just takes me back to the login page after I type in my user name and password – like the account never existed.

Never use Amazon.com! They are a bunch of opportunistic thieves!

If you're an attorney reading this, please contact me to help me sue Amazon.com, Inc. I have the records of multiple unanswered calls on two cell phones, the gift card and its receipt, and my daughter's counseling bill and her testimony to offer as evidence. I also have emails form Amazon for previous successful small priced orders that can prove I had the account, that seems to have vanished after they stole my $315.85 gift card balance, because I tried to use $250 worth of this balance to cover an emergency.