I want to mention from the start that this was my first purchase on amazon that actually had a chance to go through (the rest were supplements that are blocked in my country). My laptop broke 2 weeks ago and I went on amazon.com to look for a new one and I found one I liked. I signed in, placed the order in the cart and tried to go through the checkout process. Unfortunately amazon.com told me that this item can’t be shipped to my country(Spain) and showed me an FAQ that listed classes of items that can’t be ordered outside of USA. It was fine though as I could search on the other amazon sites and see if I could get it from there. After going through amazon.es, amazon.co.uk, and amazon.de I could not find the same model at a similar price but I did find one I liked even more on the amazon.de warehouse section. Again I signed in with the same credentials as the on the us branch, I placed the order, went to checkout, put the card details and it passed through with no problems. Everything was fine and I was checking the package tracking all the time even though it said it would not be shipped until the next day. Everything was OK until the next day when I woke up and tried to go check on the order tracker again, when I was greeted by a message that said my account is on hold and a button that said contact us. I tried to sign in again to see if I get the same thing but it didn’t work, I could not access my account at all and all I could do was contact them and so I did. I walked through the form and picked a random issue with my order as “account on hold” was not an option, and then I got on the phone with an amazon agent. I explained what happened and he told me that I should have received an email about the issue and I went to check it out. Amazon.de wanted me to fax them a bank statement with the name, address and card number of the card holder, or, ask my bank to contact them and send them this information. OK, this I thought was understandable as they want to avoid fraud and then thought about finding a fax somewhere that I could use and trust with sending this kind of information or go to the bank. But this is where it got complicated, the bank statemantes that the card holder(family member) receives don’t have the card number written on them, but the actual bank account that the card draws money from. Because of this I was unsure that would be what amazon needs so I got in contact with them again. After explaining the issue to the agent she told me again exactly like the email said, word for word, what I had to send them, so I tried explaining again more clearly that the bank statements jus don’t have the card number and have the bank account number associated with the account and that I am not trying to convince her to push my order through because I know she can’t , but I just don’t know what fax to send to amazon. She put me on hold to go check and then came back and repeated everything word for word again. OK. I don’t blmae her at all, I know she isn’t being told anything more than I am and she was as helpful as she could be. So now I had to find time to go the bank and get it straightened out. This took a few days but when we got there nothing worked out. After explaining the problem with the Amazon order and bank statements, and fax, we asked him if he can help us somehow to send this confirmation information to amazon trhough the bank(as the email instructed). The clerk checked into the card holders account and saw that there was only 1 charge from amazon Europe done on the day I made the order and it was a 1Euro charge and that was it. He also told us that it is not possible to contact amazon and send them customer information just like that because there is no formal way to do it in their system and he’s never heard of this anyway. And really, after that I also thought that was kind of ridiculous, like how does a bank contact a company, unprompted by said company, to send sensitive client information through no proper channels, as there wasnt even a pending charge for the product that could be authorized, just a 1 euro card check. So why the hell did amazon even intrsruct this in the email? Anyway, after that I just went home and contacted amazon still trying to hopefully unblock the account and get the laptop. I got on the phone with an agent again, explained from the start and then finally told her what happened at the bank and how the clerk said the bank can’t just randomly contact a company just like that and send them client info. That’s when she said “Yes, yes, that’s not possible”. Oh fucking really?? I thought, then why does the damn email say it does?? At this point I’m getting angry because if they did know, they could have not damn said it in the email, and I would not have dragged my family member to the bank to ask for damn stupid things making us look like idiots. The agent was helpful and honest at least and I tried to stay calm, I think she put me on hold and then came back and told me the same thing as in the email and then I tried to explain again that the bank statements just don’t have that on them… after which she just repeated the same thing again. At this point I was tired of it and asked to either transfer me to a supervisor or cancel the order and close the amazon account. She kept continuing and repeating the same thing again with the “fax, address…credit card number…”. Then I said “No, no, it’s a debit card. It’s not a credit card, but a debit card” to which she responded “Oh, you need a credit card to order from outside of Germany, debit cards can be used only from inside Germany or Austria and maybe that’s why the account was put on hold”(I did search for this after, and maybe its true, but I couldn’t find anything that confirmed it). I then asked how come it was charged that 1 euro if it didn’t accept debit cards from Spain and then I think she repeated the same thing she just told me again,I don’t remember I was getting too angry. Really tired of it now, I asked for a supervisor again or to just cancel the order and close my account, as I do not want to get charged for amazon prime after the trial is over when I can’t even use the account(which I found out it was unusable anyway as it only worked within Germany and Austria, though again, it allowed me to enable it just fine even though all the account details were from Spain). She assured me that when the trial is over I won’t get charged and I assured her I don’t blame her for all this and its fine. And that was it. We exchaged plesantries and done. Time wasted and missinformation all over the place.

This could have all been avoided though, because even if amazon went through and charged the card with the full price of the laptop, the bank would send an SMS with a code when you make a purchase, and you need to provide the seller the code in order to fulfill the charge. This could be the verification they wanted, that in fact the card holder did place the order and no fraud took place.

And one more thing, later I tried to sign in on the amazon.com acount and all it said is that my email or password are incorrect. After successfully resetting the password through their provided form, I tried to login again on amazon.com and got the same error ”email or password are incorrect”. Then out of curiosity to see what’s up I tried to login on amazon.de with my old credentials, and it didn’t work, but with the new password that I just set, it did, thoufh it just told me my account was still on hold. So again, more misinformation. I don’t even get why, just tell me everywhere that the damn account is on hold and don’t make me think I screwd up the passwords somehow by saying the password or email address is wrong.

Oh, and they still have my euro.