Fraudulent transactions from Amazon
For years, a friend of mine has saved his debit card information on Amazon. It seemed to be safe to do so until recently — and he never had to enter debit card info or his name and address so it was very convenient BUT — he ended up with a fraudulent charge on his credit union statement from Amazon the other day.
My friend contacted Amazon, and after some research they found that two other people/accounts on Amazon were using his debit card information. They had somehow stolen his debit card information, and it seemed that there was nothing that Amazon could do about it. Incredible. It’s as if they encourage this by not doing anything about it. Amazon said they could see who the two people were but apparently they could do nothing about it. It was unclear to my friend whether Amazon was locked out of those accounts and couldn’t get in or what was going on. Did Amazon proceed to delete my friend’s debit card information from the thieves’ accounts? No. Why not? Doesn’t that encourage this? Strangely, the customer service representative (CSR) said they couldn’t get into those accounts but they could see the people’s names and asked my friend if he could guess names and knew either person. WTF? Deleting the two accounts were not an option either. They were not treated as criminals. It seemed that Amazon was powerless in dealing with fraudulent transactions from their site. My friend was advised to have his credit union stop all payments on his debit card and to order a new debit card from the credit union. What about this happening again? He was assured by the CSR that this would/could not happen again. Well why not? Why wouldn’t it happen again when nothing is being done to stop it from happening again by Amazon? Can’t these thieves steal other people’s debit cards on the site? The CSR seemed to be implying that my friend willingly gave his debit card info to two other people on the site which was nonsense and he assured the CSR that was not the case. Who gives their debit card information to other people?
I find this incredible. I know Amazon is considered “tech” when really it’s not tech at all. It’s just another retail site. Retail is not tech. But with a big site such as Amazon, you would think they would have many different options for dealing with this problem, but no.
He also learned that his credit union could apparently not stop payments from specific companies, rather than having to get a new debit card. I find that incredible too. He asked his credit union to do that but that was not an option either. That would also involve “tech” as well.
It seems that this tech shit is really quite limited in what it can do despite all the glorification we have seen about the “wonders of tech.” When the techies barged into San Francisco disrespecting our neighbourhoods and our cultures, and drastically changed The City — with generous tax breaks — and turned San Francisco into a playground for the super wealthy, the conservatives were calling the techies “geniuses.” Yeah right. I don’t hear that rubbish any longer though. The idiot conservatives clearly have a low bar for what makes a genuine genius. It’s a lot more than having some boring coding skills. And let’s talk about tech briefly: Tech G**gle has made a fucking mess out of YT and other parts of the internet.
This is not the first time this has happened with my friend. He had the same thing happen on another retail website awhile back. His credit union fully refunded all of those purchases — approximately four — which consisted of men’s shoes and food items from various US states. Some guy in one of the southern states in the US had somehow stolen his debit card information and made several purchases with it as far away as Hawaii.
I asked my friend if he planned to return to Amazon as a customer. He said: Not if I can help it. Only if Amazon is the only place I can buy what I’m looking for.
And if he does return, he will not save his debit card information on the site any longer despite all their talk about “this won’t happen again,” and what he’s read online about how safe that is to do on Amazon with high encryption and so forth. He’s getting a little tired of having to get new debit cards.