turking_seriously
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It's because of you help! I am very thankful to you!
Mechanical Turk Suspensions and General Speculation
- Thread starter Metallica
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I pm's you. But just to reiterate, send off a nicely worded email explaining your confusion. Then send off another email every few days - just gently asking for information.
We've seen that when Amazon has made a mistake, they often correct it. So - patience! And persistence.
Jaydipsojitra
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My account is suspended without any warning, now what to do?Are you trying to log into your MTurk account but it keeps telling you the password is wrong? Even if you know it for sure, or you've reset it multiple times? Sounds like you're suspended! There appears to be multiple reasons for suspension, which will be covered in this post. My searching around the forums and Reddit for recent suspensions has shown that this can be a very long uphill battle. With that said, it appears to be a toss up whether or not you will get your account back even if you email every single person you can think of. Note that if your requester account is suspended, so is your worker account, and vice versa. This is because they use the same Amazon account.
WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NEXT
Now that you have come to the realization that you are likely suspended, let us proceed to the process you need to conform to. You should immediately use the 'Contact Us' form, located at the bottom of the MTurk home page. They will generally answer back within 1-2 business days and give you a 'canned response' as to why you were suspended.
WHO ELSE CAN I EMAIL?*
There are a variety of choices here. From experience, most of them will not lead to a response at all, however, they are read, which could make someone investigate your case further. jeff@amazon.com is the best email to use. It seems to bring better results than using the CU page on MTurk (mturk-worker-support@amazon.com). Other emails you can use can be found on the CU page on Amazon Payments, and on the main Amazon page. Permission to list the above email was granted from the moderators.
THE MAIN REASONS FOR SUSPENSION
**Update** According to correspondence@electrolyte had with someone from Amazon, it seems like you'll be getting an actual response as to what you did from here on out. 8/6/2018: This was not present in the most recent case I encountered. Suspension reasons 4 and 5 below show what an "actual response" looks like. This is much better than before. Compare the first 3 reasons, which are now "old", to the 2 new ones.
According to research and contributions from others, there are now many (used to be just 3) different suspension reasons. The actual cause for your suspension now seems to be told to you upon your first email to them.
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FURTHER RESPONSES AFTER YOUR INITIAL EMAIL
Again, there appears to be a list of things they can tell you after the initial suspension reason email. I have yet to compile a complete list of these, and only have one thus far. I hope to rectify this by receiving more contribution from others in the future. I received the exact same message shown in the "Response 1" spoiler, but I still continued to email them for 2 more days. Not much longer after, I received an email stating that my account was re-opened. Just because you received this message DOES NOT mean you are done for. It is just a canned response.
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Response 3 comes from a person I helped get unsuspended last week. Definitely the newest and most interesting contribution thus far.
FAQ
I received an email stating I am blocked by a requester. What does this mean?
What's the difference between a "hard" and "soft" block, and how many can get me suspended?
- This can be for bad quality work you have done for them, a error from their part, or an error in whatever software they use. A block is detrimental to your account and can lead to suspension if enough are gathered in a short period of time. Note that these blocks can be reversed, however you won't receive an email telling you if they were.
Can rejections get me suspended?
- There isn't a difference. A block is a block, so either distinction can lead to your suspension. The number needed for suspension isn't exactly 100% known, but the consensus is 4 within 6 months. Note that some blocks will not generate an email telling you that you were indeed blocked. This is where the "soft block" term started getting use. Years ago, a turker made a requester block them to see if an email was generated. It never was, so you can't really tell with certainty how many requesters have blocked you in the past.
How long will I have to email Amazon before I am unbanned?
- Most definitely. The general rule of thumb is to stay at 99% approval rate or higher, which isn't all that hard if you do work correctly and pay attention to Turkopticon ratings. The exact percentage you need to get suspended isn't really known, but it is something terrible, so think around 75 or 80%.
What else can I do to prevent being suspended?
- This is an answer no one can tell you, as it is up to Amazon. Remember that you are not promised to get your account back to begin with.
My account is under review. What does this mean?
- Be honest with requesters, don't scam them. Don't make multiple accounts or let other people use yours. Most of this stuff is pretty common sense, but you would be surprised how often people are suspended for that. More can be learned from MTurk's Participation Agreement, however some of it isn't clear or is misleading.
I got suspended because Amazon claims the information I provided to Payments did not match up. What can I do?
- Since this doesn't directly relate to suspensions, I am of no help. For more information regarding this, search the MTurk subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/
- This thread is not meant to cover this issue. None of the information I have in this post is directed toward it. The MTurk reddit linked above has regular conversations about it, so try there.
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Hello Jay, the post you quoted has a "what to do next" section near the top. I'd read through it and try contacting them.
Jaydipsojitra
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I got thus type of reply now what to do?
Hello,
Unfortunately, we are not able to take any additional action regarding your Amazon Mechanical Turk Worker account suspension, or offer any additional insight. Please refer to our earlier correspondence for details regarding this decision.
Your account will not be re-opened. We regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction.
Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
Account Specialist
Hello,
Unfortunately, we are not able to take any additional action regarding your Amazon Mechanical Turk Worker account suspension, or offer any additional insight. Please refer to our earlier correspondence for details regarding this decision.
Your account will not be re-opened. We regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction.
Thank you for your understanding.
Sincerely,
Account Specialist
Jaydipsojitra
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It seems like possibly they couldn't verify your identity. I am not sure the next step past that, I am sorry.
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I think people have had to do this multiple times. I would try again and email that you have done it again.
Hello everyone,
I´m in the same boat as everyone else here. Received an email a few days ago from Mturk stating:
We regret to inform you that your Amazon Mechanical Turk Worker account has been suspended effective immediately. We took this action because our records indicate that your Worker account is related to another Amazon Mechanical Turk account that was closed for violation of the MTurk Participation Agreement.
I´m a US worker which means my account is tied to my SSN... How can I have a different account when I only have 1 SSN? This is my first and only Mturk account with 98% approval rating and nearly 3000 approved hits. I only signed up and was approved in February. I wrote a reply politely stating that I don´t have and have never had another account. I´ve only received a generic response from aws-cs-mturk-worker-support-form@amazon.com
Any advice on how to move forward and get in contact with an actual human would be appreciated.
I´m in the same boat as everyone else here. Received an email a few days ago from Mturk stating:
We regret to inform you that your Amazon Mechanical Turk Worker account has been suspended effective immediately. We took this action because our records indicate that your Worker account is related to another Amazon Mechanical Turk account that was closed for violation of the MTurk Participation Agreement.
I´m a US worker which means my account is tied to my SSN... How can I have a different account when I only have 1 SSN? This is my first and only Mturk account with 98% approval rating and nearly 3000 approved hits. I only signed up and was approved in February. I wrote a reply politely stating that I don´t have and have never had another account. I´ve only received a generic response from aws-cs-mturk-worker-support-form@amazon.com
Any advice on how to move forward and get in contact with an actual human would be appreciated.
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I don't know of another email addy. But I do know that you need to keep emailing - and ask for clarification. If it were me, I'd keep trying to kick the matter up to a supervisor for review.
Does anyone have a good contact email for getting a response from Amazon regarding proving identity? The only email they provide gets repeated canned responses. I'm asking for a close family member who just initiated an account with a Social Security number, and hasn't been able to get past that to give bank routing numbers, etc. Messages he gets are "cannot verify identity"
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Have they asked him to fax a document in? Traditionally, this was solved by calling Payments CS and arguing with them for a bit. I imagine it would go about as painlessly as a spinal tap.
All he has done is given SS# through Amazon payments. He was unable to continue setting it up with bank routing numbers, and contacted amazon payments email (the only contact he could find) and response was "unable to verify identity." He contacted again to ask what he should do to verify, and got the same response back, no explanation of what the next step was, just "unable to verify identity". I told him to be persistant and fax or call, but he only has that same email contact for Amazon payments. I tried to find another contact, but was unsuccessful.
I'll tell him to call Payments CS
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Out of curiosity, did he receive the registration invitation from Amazon for turk? Or did he continue to set up that information immediately after signing up for turk?
I know that he is able to see the mturk interface, and the hits, and I believe he immediately went to fill out amazon payment info.
Edit: He said he received invitation to register, and it included a link to complete payment info. He was only able to give SS# and address. He wrote another email to amazon today. He can see the hits, but can't do them. He gets message that account not verified.
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My guess would be they'll make him fax some sort of identifying document, then. It has been a long time since I've dealt with that but he should he able to call Payments CS for that. With any luck, he won't need to mention mturk at all since it is a Payments issue. None of them knew what MTurk was back then, and I'd be very surprised if they do now
The phone line for payments is not accepting calls right now "because of social distancing" I tried calling Friday and got hit with a recording. No menu tree, no mention of a date of return.
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