We love a good life hack here at So Yummy. Whether it’s a trick for opening a bottle of wine without a corkscrew or an inspired dessert hack, we’re all for anything that makes our life easier. To this day, ordering things on Amazon is one of the simplest and most effective life hacks out there. It has groceries, home goods, and great gift ideas with competitive prices to boot. But unfortunately, they also have a policy that we didn’t know existed until recently. Apparently, if you return too many items, you can get banned from Amazon.
We’ll be the first to admit that sometimes we get a little carried away with online shopping. If we don’t know what size we need, we’ll order two and return the one that’s not a match. When we don’t know what color to choose, we’ll order a few and only keep the winner. We didn’t think that the Amazon gods minded. But apparently, they do.
According to The Wall Street Journal, two shoppers recently had their Amazon accounts banned. A customer named Nir Nissim said his account was banned because he initiated too many returns. But after calling Amazon, they lifted the ban. They didn’t offer specifics about what kind of activity can get customer cut off, but most cases are likely similar to Nissim’s.
However, Amazon did say in a statement that while accounts may be banned, it’s rare that they’re banned for long.
“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,” Amazon said, USA Today reports. “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.”
We’re guessing that the occasional return here and there won’t raise any red flags, because hey — returns happen. But if you’re a serial order-it-and-return-it Amazon shopper, you might want to be a little extra careful with your return habits. Because nobody wants their Prime privileges taken away.
