Hacker News Reader

Comment by simcop2387 | Hacker News Reader

One potential problem with that is that Amazon can retaliate by closing the users's account if they didn't agree with the charge-back even if they're unsuccessful at fighting it. That can be really difficult to deal with if you're also using AWS for hosting or other things.

View on HN

Whenever I see comments about how "Company XYZ deleted my account after I issued a charge-back!" I ask: Why would one want to continue doing business with a company that made you issue a charge-back? Charge-back is pretty much the nuclear option of last resort when you have exhausted all avenues of redress. You're basically doing it to get your money back and "salt the earth" as you leave. I've done a few charge-backs in my life, and not once, ever, under any circumstances would want to do business with those companies again.

I frequently see people suggest a chargeback as the first option. I have seen people suggest it instead of even trying for an RMA. I have seen it suggested for delayed delivery.

I have no idea about the frequency, but I have reason to suspect some are quite frivolous.

Like you, I believe it should be the last option. I'm just not sure that we are the majority.

Sure, if everything in the world had competitors that were trivial to switch to. If I suffer through bad customer service for two hours that's bad but it's not itself enough to make me switch companies. As long as I get my money back I'll still be willing to work with most companies.

FWIW, I've had Amazon instruct me to file a chargeback in one instance that they had already identified as fraud.

It was a very different situation, however: someone had my CC info and loaded it onto a new account and made a large purchase.

Oddly when I inquired Amazon said they had already flagged the fraud and I needed to send a chargeback. It appeared that they were not going to proactively let me (or my cc company) about the issue.

I get it, but can't help but lose a little respect for a company that knows with certaintly one of their customers has been defrauded and sits back and waits for them to notice. Maybe they couldn't initiate the refund, but surely they could send a notice or otherwise reach out.

That's weird, as issuing a CC refund is cheaper for everyone than a chargeback.

I thought so too. I had identified the charges as fraudulent but was afraid of retribution from Amazon for the chargeback, so I called them first.

I'm kind of surprised I even caught the transactions given how many legit ones I have each month with them.

A good reason never to mix a shopping account with a development account. If you are using Amazon developer services, I never understood why you wouldn't want that as a dedicated development account with Amazon.

Uh... isn't it obvious that you should never use your personal shopping/Prime account for business-critical services?

Yes, that would be common sense. The problem with common sense is that it's not very common.

Has that happened to people in the past? I do have an AWS account attached to my prime account (a dumb choice from years ago). The stuff on it isn't critical or anything, though.

If Amazon retaliates and was involved in a USPS fraud case. I would think the business owner would have a very good chance of a large settlement.....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com