Help! Account locked because of transferring money to gift card. Mturk support sucks.

brianj

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Hi everybody.

I am from Vietnam and as you already know, I can only transfer my Mturk earning to Amazon gift card balance. I used to use my Mturk money to buy laptops, shoes and books shipping to my address in Vietnam. But because of Covid 19 that causes shipping issue, I did not buy anything and kept the money in the Mturk account. Then in May, I started to transfer $45 everyday to my gift card balance for over 2 weeks.

I did not buy anything. I just save the money there in the gift card balance.

Then 2 weeks ago, Amazon asked me to do security check for my account. They asked me to solve captcha, confirm phone number, confirm billing address then asked me to provide documents to prove the sources of my gift cards. I then replied that I did not have any documents as this is Mturk earnings. After that, Amazon locked my account because of “unusual activities” and asked me to contact support to solve the problem.

I then contact Mturk support and got a reply that they had transferred the case to the Amazon team and I should be contacted by Amazon soon.

But after a few days, I did not receive anything from Amazon. I contacted Mturk support again and got another reply that I should call Amazon by myself.

I then called Amazon support numbers ( 2 numbers) but the autoreply of both numbers told me that Amazon is now focusing serving people in the US that are affected of Covid 19. I guess it was because of my Vietnam phone number. And then they asked me to log in into my account to get support.

But because my account is locked, I cannot do anything. So I was stuck. So I contacted Mturk support again and the Mturk support guy replied that he will call the Amazon team and will reply back to me soon.

But it has been 7 days since the last email from Mturk support and I did not receive anything at all from both Mturk and Amazon. I have sent 2 other emails to Mturk support but no reply at all.

I hope somebody here could tell me what to do as now I dont know what to do. I now have nearly $800 in the Amazon gift card balance and about $600 in the Mturk account. I now cannot even use my kindle and audible accounts which have a lot of ebooks and audible books I've bought.
 
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jan

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Hi everybody.

I am from Vietnam and as you already know, I can only transfer my Mturk earning to Amazon gift card balance. I used to use my Mturk money to buy laptops, shoes and books shipping to my address in Vietnam. But because of Covid 19 that causes shipping issue, I did not buy anything and kept the money in the Mturk account. Then in May, I started to transfer $45 everyday to my gift card balance for over 2 weeks.

I did not buy anything. I just save the money there in the gift card balance.

Then 2 weeks ago, Amazon asked me to do security check for my account. They asked me to solve captcha, confirm phone number, confirm billing address then asked me to provide documents to prove the sources of my gift cards. I then replied that I did not have any documents as this is Mturk earnings. After that, Amazon locked my account because of “unusual activities” and asked me to contact support to solve the problem.

I then contact Mturk support and got a reply that they had transferred the case to the Amazon team and I should be contacted by Amazon soon.

But after a few days, I did not receive anything from Amazon. I contacted Mturk support again and got another reply that I should call Amazon by myself.

I then called Amazon support numbers ( 2 numbers) but the autoreply of both numbers told me that Amazon is now focusing serving people in the US that are affected of Covid 19. I guess it was because of my Vietnam phone number. And then they asked me to log in into my account to get support.

But because my account is locked, I cannot do anything. So I was stuck. So I contacted Mturk support again and the Mturk support guy replied that he will call the Amazon team and will reply back to me soon.

But it has been 7 days since the last email from Mturk support and I did not receive anything at all from both Mturk and Amazon. I have sent 2 other emails to Mturk support but no reply at all.

I hope somebody here could tell me what to do as now I dont know what to do. I now have nearly $800 in the Amazon gift card balance and about $600 in the Mturk account. I now cannot even use my kindle and audible accounts which have a lot of ebooks and audible books I've bought.
I wish we had a good answer for you. The truth is, we don't. We did establish a suspension thread that you should read through. Often people DO recover any monies held by amazon. But, the only thing you can do is be persistent and polite.
Here is our thread: https://mturkcrowd.com/threads/mechanical-turk-suspensions-and-general-speculation.1778/

Come back and tell us how this resolves itself - so we can keep that information for others. And good luck! It must feel awful for all of this to happen. I really hope it works out
 

jan

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And just to add something hopeful, some of the last posts are from folks who DID get their accounts back (and their money!) So there is hope. Keep at it.
 

brianj

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And just to add something hopeful, some of the last posts are from folks who DID get their accounts back (and their money!) So there is hope. Keep at it.
Thank you for your reply.

The problem seems very easy but the way Amazon treated me really makes me angry. If only they just allow us to withdraw earnings to our banks. But Amazon is so greedy that they dont want money to get out of their hands.
 
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