No more 'No questions asked': Amazon will ban you permanently if you return too many items

Till now, Amazon's policy spared the customer disputes with couriers, sellers and manufacturers over defective or unsuitable goods. But not anymore.

One reason online retailers such as Amazon have been able to pull customers from brick-and-mortar stores is the 'no questions asked' return policy. Anyone can return an item within 30 days without having to give an explanation. This policy spared the customer disputes with couriers, sellers and manufacturers over defective or unsuitable goods. But not anymore.

Amazon USA  has started quizzing customers over returned items and has even banned accounts from which even 10% of ordered items were returned, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

A number of customers have shared their experience on Twitter.



A customer tweeted a letter she got from Amazon, asking her to explain why she had returned so many items in the past 12 months. She said she purchased 50 things and returned only six which could not be termed excessive returns.



Though Amazon's return policy does not forbid people from returning more than a certain number of total orders or warns them of a ban in case of excessive returns, its conditions of use say it reserves the right to terminate accounts at its discretion. According to the WSJ report, Amazon refused to tell how many returns could be too many.

“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,” an Amazon spokesman said. “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.”

A customer, Nir Nissim, told WSJ his account was closed suddenly after he returned a computer drive earlier this year and four items last year. He received an email from Amazon that read: “You cannot open a new account or use another account to place orders on our site,” but did not explain that his account closure had been trigged by too many returns. This was especially troubling because he had an unused $450 gift card to Amazon, according to WSJ.

When he was able to contact a customer service rep after repeated attempts, he was told it was because he had made too many returns. It was only after he directly emailed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that another Amazon employee replied and agreed to reactive his Amazon account.