I led a problem resolution team at a large company. If we ever knowingly received three calls from any client for the same problem (through any method of client contact source), or the complaint was vocal or serious enough on the first call (or first identifiable call), the incident would be forwarded to us and we'd deal with it directly. Rarely did the most complex issue take more than a day or two to resolve. On occasion it took a week or two if it was especially complex, but we'd contact the client directly and offer to give them a daily update so they'd know what was going on.

I'd be quite surprised if Amazon didn't have a similar team, even if just a dozen or two staff, if they are experienced, that's all that's usually required. The savings lost to poor public relations, and improved customer relations, easily make up for the cost of the team.

Out of curiosity, what would you do if the client got to this point, and your team determined that it was a fraudulent claim?

Obviously, if it's legitimate, you would have the ability to fix the issue right away. However, what if there were enough red flags that it didn't seem entirely right?

Not saying that this is the case either way, but I'm curious what the standard procedure is in that case.

In the case described in the posting, if I found it to be a valid claim and could not resolve why the problem was occurring within 24-48 hours, I would likely suggest that we create a new account for the client and populate it with the titles we knew he had purchased and perhaps provide a $100 or similar amount as compensation.

For this case, my team would have resolved it within 24-48 hours, based on the information that he's posted. It doesn't seem overly complex, assuming no fraud (or his account was mangled in a data transfer or deleted in someway and he hasn't mentioned that), and the resolution takes a few hours of someone making the new account and searching for titles to add to the account.

As a longer answer...

We didn't deal directly with public relations or issue press releases concerning significant public domain complaints, as to the best of my recollection, we didn't have a large PR nightmare to deal with while I was with the team. So that aspect I can not comment on.

If it was an issue of fraud, and we had several instances of fraudulent claims, we would clearly state that was our conclusion to the customer (or claimed customer). Our company did not actively pursue legal action against fraud cases, including a significant internal fraud case that was discovered, because of the possible negative publicity and loss of public reputation/brand quality.

Though through escalation, if I could not personally (as head of the team) find a solution to the issue and we felt it was fraud, we would offer to arrange an in-person meeting with the customer and ask that they bring their (or a) lawyer as the department VP, along with our legal team, would like to discuss the issue in detail. I don't remember more than one client coming in for a meeting in a two year period and we had security officers in the next room (with blinds down and listening in) in case there was a problem.

> I can't really think of what that thing might be that would give Amazon the right to lock this guy out?

I can easily imagine several scenarios; the one I'm having trouble imagining is one where they can't tell him why he's locked out.

Honestly, the only thing that is even remotely reasonable is an investigation by a three-letter agenchy.

Not necessarily that the guy did something malicious, but he could be making it exceedingly difficult for amazon to solve his problem. It seems like such a simple solution to me - if the account is for some reason not unlockable, create a new account, gift credit the guy all his purchases, and permanently close the old account. I know that the CSRs have the ability to do this. If they aren't, there's a reason.

Initial guess, from some experiences with chargeback happy customers, is that the guy started initiating chargebacks before giving amazon a chance to resolve his problems, and amazon is refusing to help him until he cancels the chargeback process.

Your parent has past (positive) experience with Amazon. He has never met or even spoken to the customer. Why should he immediately trust the customer over Amazon? Because Business Is Evil?

Not to take anyone's side, since I don't know the details, but maybe they suspected the account was using an stolen CC? I know companies tend to aggressively protect credit card holders (specially since rollbacks are so expensive). I'm sure amazon must be the target of stolen credit cards consistently.

That said, regardless of their size, they should expedite this type of check, specially for accounts that are not new!