Amazon account suspended - anyone had this happen?

Mairiphinc

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I’m talking my full amazon account, not just MTurk, but obviously with the knock on effect that I can’t access MTurk now either.

I received a legit email (I’ve spoken to Amazon over the phone too) stating that due to ‘unusual activity’ on my account, my account was suspended while they verify my details and they’ve asked for proof that my debit card that’s on the account actually belongs to me. I’ve sent what I can but they still haven’t got back to me yet and the customer service side can’t do anything to help as ‘that team don’t take phone calls’ 🙄

I’m a U.K. MTurker, paid in gift card balance which I’ve been converting using Purse.io. I thought that this was a legitimate site and way to do things as that is what all other U.K. MTurkers seem to have to do in order to ever see any cash, at least until they allow us to actually withdraw to a bank account (a few special cases have this as a pilot but no clue when it‘s rolling out to the rest of us). Without the ability to convert my gift card balance into cash, MTurk is basically useless for me and most other people outside of India and the US because the gift card balance isn’t even on our local Amazon site so shipping would be ridiculous.

I assumed everything I was doing was above board, after all, I’ve earnt the gift card balance so surely I can spend it on whatever I want that’s legal, including buying gifts for other people. But now I’m questioning myself and I’ve even seen one guy on another support forum who has had his account suspended because they insisted that his gift card balance, paid to him by MTurk, had come from an ‘unauthorised third party’. It seems like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

I’m already expecting a succession of canned, bot like responses that go round in circles while trying to sort this out but just wondering if anyone else has experienced this or possibly this may even be a warning to other U.K. MTurkers that they might be cracking down on this sort of thing. More information to follow when I have it. Feeling very frustrated as I really haven’t done anything wrong and they should allow us to withdraw our own money to the bank instead of this stupid gift card system.
 
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jan

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I’m talking my full amazon account, not just MTurk, but obviously with the knock on effect that I can’t access MTurk now either.

I received a legit email (I’ve spoken to Amazon over the phone too) stating that due to ‘unusual activity’ on my account, my account was suspended while they verify my details and they’ve asked for proof that my debit card that’s on the account actually belongs to me. I’ve sent what I can but they still haven’t got back to me yet and the customer service side can’t do anything to help as ‘that team don’t take phone calls’ 🙄

I’m a U.K. MTurker, paid in gift card balance which I’ve been converting using Purse.io. I thought that this was a legitimate site and way to do things as that is what all other U.K. MTurkers seem to have to do in order to ever see any cash, at least until they allow us to actually withdraw to a bank account (a few special cases have this as a pilot but no clue when it‘s rolling out to the rest of us). Without the ability to convert my gift card balance into cash, MTurk is basically useless for me and most other people outside of India and the US because the gift card balance isn’t even on our local Amazon site so shipping would be ridiculous.

I assumed everything I was doing was above board, after all, I’ve earnt the gift card balance so surely I can spend it on whatever I want that’s legal, including buying gifts for other people. But now I’m questioning myself and I’ve even seen one guy on another support forum who has had his account suspended because they insisted that his gift card balance, paid to him by MTurk, had come from an ‘unauthorised third party’. It seems like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

I’m already expecting a succession of canned, bot like responses that go round in circles while trying to sort this out but just wondering if anyone else has experienced this or possibly this may even be a warning to other U.K. MTurkers that they might be cracking down on this sort of thing. More information to follow when I have it. Feeling very frustrated as I really haven’t done anything wrong and they should allow us to withdraw our own money to the bank instead of this stupid gift card system.
I don't have any specific wisdom to share, except in general - suspensions OFTEN get reversed (after some level of back and forth)

Here's our 'mega' suspension thread to take a look at:

https://www.mturkcrowd.com/threads/mechanical-turk-suspensions-and-general-speculation.1778/
 
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JCIII

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I also have no specific information on MTURK as far as how it goes in other countries than the US. That said if you have not already done so go and work on Prolific. They typically pay better than Turk work and since they are in the UK you don't even have to pay the currency exchange like we do here in the US when we cash out.
 

jeepjeep

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purse.io looks like it would be prone to money laundering issues, anything involving crypto is going to raise flags.
 
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