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Comment by Friedduck | Hacker News Reader

We were stopped by a TSA agent, who took great care to inspect our Cards Against Humanity deck, and ask lots of questions. Where'd you buy them? What is this? She revealed in the course of the conversation that she'd been banned from shopping on Amazon.

I posit that someone who's banned from shopping at AMZN is more dangerous than someone who plays card games with a dark sense of humor. How does that even happen?

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> How does that even happen?

Fraud and abuse.

Treating Amazon like a mail-in library for books, tools, and other products is the easiest way.

Returning a huge number of your orders regardless of other forms of abuse.

Contesting valid CC charges.

Etc.

> I posit that someone who's banned from shopping at AMZN is more dangerous than someone who plays card games with a dark sense of humor.

I wouldn't necessarily say "dangerous". Maybe "untrustworthy" or "lacking in good judgement" or "lacking a strong moral compass".

Instead of trying to judge the person, how about we conceive of behaviors?

They could be someone who cycles in and out of addictive or manic shopping. The word that comes to mind for me there is "tragic".

People being assholes, dicks, or just plain evil is probably the most exceptional of exceptions. It's considerably more likely that there's a much more complicated explanation that deserves understanding and compassion.

Judgmental characterizations aren't necessarily inconsistent with empathy and compassion. Especially in the context of an LEO.

I probably wouldn't blindly trust someone who cycles in and out of addictive or manic shopping with a large line of credit or with carte blanc access to a lot of other people's valuables. Just because their addiction makes them untrustworthy doesn't mean they're a bad person.

Also, using Amazon as a library isn't necessarily indicative of manic shopping. It could just be that the person is acting in their own self interest and not taking into account the effects of their actions on Amazon's other customers.

Canceling valid CC charges has a lot of explanations -- maybe the person is just a habitual liar in way that's best thought of in a medical context.

But in all of these cases, empathy and judgement can go hand-in-hand.

I completely agree. In the future, I'd rather say I prefer to seek non-judgmental explanations before bringing judgment to the table, as it allows me to identify more potential scenarios.

I have bipolar disorder, and many (if not most) people with bipolar shop to excess during manic phases. One person in my therapy group spends several thousand dollars on clothing, shoes, technology, etc. in a single day roughly twice per year, and then brings it all back the next day when he realizes that he cannot afford it all. He's banned from J. Crew and Brooks Brothers. I've done similar things (although not to that scale). Ultimately, there can be many reasons for strange or even potentially harmful behavior that one cannot easily control.

How do they enforce that ban? Do they check the ID of every shopper who makes a purchase?

Facial recognition + security guard

unfeasible.

Set up the POS machines to refuse to process purchases using certain credit card numbers, or based on the name associated with the card, I'm guessing.

> or based on the name associated with the card

doubtful that that is a strategy or else there would be a ban on common names.

Multi-level process since a "ban" in online world is difficult to achieve:

1. Set a cookie (lowest form since cookies get cleaned/deleted, but useful)

2. Recognize username + email address (tied to cookie so multiple usernames/emails can be used)

3. Address - physical shipping address is difficult to constantly change (for a normal person, scammers that use drop addresses are a different story all together)

4. Credit Card number w/associated billing address. The billing address is also difficult to constantly change and would correspond to shipping address.

There are additional steps a company can take, if necessary.

Out of curiosity, what's going through your mind during the shopping spree? Do you just feel a lot of giddy excitement and anticipation about all the cool new stuff you (think you) are going to get?

Based on stories I've heard/read about manic spending, each person/episode can be different. Having said that, a common thread in many is some delusion of grandeur that could justify the expenses were it not a delusion.

Example I've heard: buying all the tubes of a certain kind of paint in an art supply store in anticipation of doing some huge project. The project realistically would've taken years to complete & their delusion was they were an unnaturally fast artist. Once they snapped out of it, they realized the work they'd done so quickly was shoddy, at best, though they couldn't tell in the grips of mania. They returned most of the unopened paint the next day.

I have mild bipolar myself so I definitely know that exact feeling, though I've never acted on the urge to spend tons of money (yet). That delusion of starting a grand project that would maybe feasible but take an insane amount of work can consume me fairly often.

Most people with bipolar, like myself, don't shop for shopping's sake; it's because they want to take on a new project or make a major change in their life. I'd buy things like homebrewing supplies, a project car, or athletic equipment. It all either gets returned or starts sitting around a month later, when things get worse.

Sometimes, the projects you failed at eat away at you, daily proof that you are as big of a failure as you think you are, marking your failure as a person. When it's already hard to get out of bed, having to walk past hallmarks of your incompetence makes it even harder.

Rinse and repeat a couple times a year.

That's what mania is for me: a surge of confidence in myself, visible to others as pressured speech and hyperactivity, occasionally leading to irritability. It varies from person to person, though.

>Treating Amazon like a mail-in library for books, tools, and other products is the easiest way.

Isn't that part of their business? I order stuff to try it out and if it turns out it sucks, I send it back. Isn't that the point of the online store to trump the disadvantage that I cannot try things out without buying them first?

EDIT: It turns out you have to do quite some abuse there and they even send you warning emails. So it won't just happen out of the blue.

EDIT2: What's with the downvotes? Here I was thinking this community is better than Reddit for certain things, but I guess I was wrong.

Up until some amount. Once it becomes clear that you're more trouble than profit, they'll cut you off (and if they are unlucky, your neighbors as well). Amazon seems to bit all over the place with that, if media reports are to be believed.

I guess it has to be quite excessive (e.g. ordering tens of things every day).

Here is an example with ~10% returns, although of course no information what specific pattern (e.g. maybe a lot towards the end, or something like "bought 8 expensive things to compare with the intend of returning 7"). https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/18/banned-by-amaz...

What's IMHO worse is that they remove Kindle access etc as well (I think here in Germany they've been sucessfully sued for that, so not sure if they still do it)

Yes. I also use Amazon Cloud Drive for my external backups. So if they ban me from the store, they would also ban me from accessing my backups.

10% is a lot though and another one in the article is ~25%. Typically it should be more like <1%. I am not sure it's a great policy but it's their store. It's also only one side of the story as well so who knows what amazon's side is.

Yes, it's part of their business. But if you return 90% of what you order, you are a major cost to them and they have no reason to keep you as a customer.

I see. I guess this is like the people who "abuse" unlimited online storage.

I guess. It's no different than brick and mortar stores, though. If you buy $1000 of junk from Best Buy every day and return it a week later, they'll eventually tell you that they will no longer do business with you.

Don't assume. I got banned from AliExpress after reading a post on here about the ridiculous free shipping from China, making an account, and buying my friend sexy underwear for $1. Thanks HackerNews.

What did you get banned for? I've been ordering a bunch of $1 things from Ebay the last few months and they all came through without trouble (from China with free shipping).

I bought a lot of below dollar items on AliExpress, no problems whatsoever. Why did you get banned for real?

Also, AliExpress is like second coming of Amazon.

Now I am curious, What's the issue if the list price says that it is >$1?

"Banned from shopping on Amazon" or some variant is a good candidate for writing on a custom card.

It's almost a good band name. "Banned from Shopping" I'm not pretentious enough for vinyl, but maybe I could get that on a CD?

We should start a thread purely for tech inspired band names. There is a local (quote a good) band here called "Snapchat Regret"...

I vaguely remember someone (on HN? reddit?) who made hundreds of amazon orders, returned 2/3 of them, and acted all indignant when they banned him ("It's not my fault everything is garbage!"). If the TSA lady's story is half as entertaining, I'd love to have heard it.

Do you happen to remember in what time frame the hundreds of orders happened?

A year, I think? It wasn't the volume that struck me as unusual, it was the return rate.

I have returned/replaced almost 50% of items from Flipkart (Indian competitor of Amazon) because they sent me defective or broken packages. I have had a couple of packages that look like they were opened. I'd never shop there if it weren't for these 'exclusives' they have with companies. :/

Wait, someone who Amazon does not trust to send them money, is securing travel in the US? That seems problematic.

Curious, would you think the same about somebody that got their Google account closed? Do you have a reason to trust Amazon anti-fraud algorithms more than Google anti-fraud algorithms?

I'm not sure -- you could make the argument that without dollars exchanged, the value of Google's algorithm is less. The overall irony that I'm attempting to express is that this person is part of a governmental "trust and safety" team but has been found untrustworthy by a pretty intelligent company. Now, I think acting on this information would be highly problematic for other reasons... I just find it interesting.

This reply is almost completely unrelated to the thread topic.

Just wait until the storefront business everyone is so excited about takes off. Now you can't buy groceries anymore.

> I posit that someone who's banned from shopping at AMZN is more dangerous than someone who plays card games with a dark sense of humor. How does that even happen?

So now you've conclused she's dangerous, based solely on her standing with a retailer, without knowing anything about the situation?

Compulsive shopper banned from shopping online by her husband/therapist?

Amazon is known for banning entire addresses, regardless of how many people live there, so being banned from Amazon doesn't say necessarily anything at all about a person.

EDIT: re How does that even happen?, link with some examples that I dug out for a comment further down: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/18/banned-by-amaz...

I really wonder why people put so much trust in such decisions by tech companies...

EDIT by reply: here is a (german) article about Amazon blocking an entire building: https://www.heise.de/video/artikel/In-Ihrem-Haus-hat-jemand-...

Hmm, I'm banned from PreCheck for 24 more months. Maybe I could help get her some Amazon items and she could help me with my TSA status?

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