So I bought a product for €200 on Amazon.com. I am slightly ashamed of doing so but I did, didn’t know where else to find this type of product. So after a few days they told me they would not be sending me the product for whatever reason. So I would be getting a refund. They said if I hadn’t gotten the refund within 5 days I should contact support. So after 5 days I contacted support. And as soon as I did that, they sent me an email claiming that they require me to upload a picture of my “government issued identity document”. They write that if I don’t do that “You may continue shopping on Amazon, but you will no longer be eligible for a refund on the order <order number>”. Surely they have no right to do so right? They claim they’ve noticed some suspicious behavior on my account, but all I did was order a product, pay for it in advance, which they decided not to ever deliver to me. It’s not me who’s being suspicious here.

Anyone else had this experience? This a clear dealbreaker for me. I feel shame for ever having bought something from their store.

Amazon has a non-existent customer support, so you may have limited options.

If they had customer support, I’d suggest contacting them and tell them to either refund, or else you’d give them the ID immediately followed by a GDPR request to purge your data. That might have gotten some movement, because those GDPR requests have the force of law, and are also a fair PITA for Amazon. However, there’s no way to give them a shot across the bow. I think your options are:

  • process a charge-back, as someone else suggested, which might result in an Amazon ban
  • take the loss (that’s entirely your call, regardless of anyone else’s opinion)
  • give them the ID, get your refund
  • you can still initiate a GDPR purge request. I’m going to guess it’s going to result in a block, but maybe not. You might be able to recreate your account

The happy news is that you are protected by GDPR. Many of us are not, and don’t even have the option to demand they purge the information.

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