How to Recover a Locked Amazon Account
Amazon locks accounts to limit fraud, reduce unauthorized transactions, and stop suspicious activity. But sometimes, Amazon gets it wrong. To recover a locked account, you’ll need to contact Amazon support. This tutorial shows you how.
Getting your Amazon account locked can be pretty frustrating whether you are a customer or a seller. If you’re a customer, a locked account could result in not receiving your orders from Amazon or getting locked out of other services like Fire and Kindle. If you’re a seller, it could affect your bottom line since your business isn’t operable until the issue is resolved.
If you’ve been searching for a solution to recover a locked Amazon account, you’ve come to the right place. This tutorial looks at why Amazon accounts get locked, what you can do about it when it happens, and how you might be able to avoid it in the first place.
Why Did Your Amazon Account Get Locked?
If you get a message stating, “Your Amazon account is locked, and orders are on hold,” you’re probably wondering why it happened.
The main reasons why Amazon locks an account are to prevent unauthorized transactions and to stop fraud. Amazon has an automated system for detecting suspicious activity. Here are some of the reasons your Amazon account may be locked:
- Providing false information to Amazon: Entering fake information is one of the most common reasons Amazon accounts get locked. Amazon has numerous ways to detect if you provided a false name, shipping address, billing address, or other important information.
- An uncommonly high number of orders for a new account: Amazon has an anti-fraud system that detects unusual activity, such as a high volume of orders for new accounts. One way to avoid triggering this safety net is to limit your order volume to 30 orders daily for the first few weeks after activating your account.
- High volume of returns: Another red flag that Amazon monitors from their sellers is the average returns of products. Returns are usually free for the buyers, but it costs Amazon to pay for the shipping. You’ll usually get a warning if you’re returning too many items quickly, but be proactive and minimize returns anyway.
- Unusual gift card activity: Gift cards are great for attracting customers, but they’re often abused as parts of various scams. Amazon tries to regulate gift cards pretty tightly. If you have just created an Amazon Primeaccount, it’s best to avoid purchasing a gift card until you have a proven track record on the platform.
- Using Different IP addresses with varying locations: When you open your Amazon account in different places (and thus use different IP addresses), there’s a good chance Amazon will assume your account has been hacked. It’s much like when a credit card company detects that a card has been used in two very different locations too closely together. This scenario is doubly true if orders are placed outside your usual operational area. Hence, be cautious about sharing your Amazon account with someone else.
Those are the main reasons Amazon accounts get locked. Next, let’s look at what you can do to recover a locked account if it happens to you.
How to Recover Your Locked Amazon Account
Amazon usually cites the reason why your account got locked. Once you know why they closed your account, the only way to unlock it is to prove that you haven’t done anything wrong. To do that, you’ll need to contact Amazon.
There are several ways to contact Amazon and upload relevant documents to prove your case.
1. Contact Amazon through Email
The first thing you should do when your account is locked is to check if you received any emails from Amazon. If you have received an email from an account specialist, you can reply directly.
Make sure that you attach the documents and information the account specialist requests. If you have not received any email regarding this matter, proceed with these steps.
- Open your browser and head over to the Amazon
- On the sign-in page, click Need help?
- Then, click Other issues with sign-in.
- Next, select Account & login issues and click I cannot sign in to my account.
- Finally, compose an email about the issue you encountered and ask for your account to be reinstated. You should get a reply from Amazon within a day about the next steps you should take.
2. Contact Amazon via phone call
Call Amazon support using one of the following numbers.
Please reply if any query.
