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If you’re like me, there’s a very good chance you’ve woken up on a Saturday morning with an email from Amazon in your inbox letting you know your ordered something the night before that you have absolutely no recollection of. Thankfully, drunk me and sober me have pretty similar tastes, so even though I might have never ordered Tremors: The Complete Collection on Blu-Ray in a normal state of mind, I can’t say I totally regret the decision.
Thankfully, Amazon has made it pretty easy to return items you regret buying for one reason or another, and if you have Prime, the only real cost of sending an item back is having to make the trip to the post office. However, after a recent revelation, you might want to think twice about aggressively returning items.
According to CNET, a number of return-happy Amazon customers have been banned from the site without warning in recent months. The Wall Street Journal documented the unwritten policy after a number of customers took to social media and beyond to complain about their account being terminated for seemingly no reason and with no real recourse for action.
It’s not clear if the policy kicks in when you hit a certain number of items or if it’s a percentage of your overall purchases, but an Amazon representative attempted to explain the company’s reasoning:
“We want everyone to be able to use Amazon, but there are rare occasions where someone abuses our service over an extended period of time. We never take these decisions lightly, but with over 300 million customers around the world, we take action when appropriate to protect the experience for all our customers. If a customer believes we’ve made an error, we encourage them to contact us directly so we can review their account and take appropriate action.”
There has been speculation that the policy is meant to combat fake reviews from “verified” customers who are paid to provide positive feedback for their troubles. With that said, you might want to start thinking very carefully about those late-night purchases.