Re:Digital Exile: How I Got Banned for Life from AirBnB
by kangnkodos on Friday July 13, 2018 @12:23PM
(#17524297)
Amazon is currently banning people for making too many returns.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers...
My guess is that they have an algorithm to automatically ban people who abuse the return system. But if you are the unlucky person who gets one defective item after another and returns them, then Amazon bans your account. You are not allowed to buy anything else on Amazon's web site, ever. And it is difficult or impossible to speak to a human to resolve the situation.
Bans like this are yet another transparent exercise of platforms' power. Where does it stop? Amazon clearly has the technological ability to ban you from Whole Foods if you returned too many items on their website or wrote some bad things about them online; I'm just waiting for the first Medium post about it. Can the phone company ban your number if they don't like who you're talking to? Hell, even my apartment lease lets them terminate it if I "engage in criminal activity", not requiring "criminal charges, arrest, or conviction", but by a "preponderance of the evidence in our judgment".