Amazon will ban you for returning too many items

A number of Amazon customers are complaining that they've been banned from the retailer over what the company claims are excessive returns, despite the fact that nowhere in Amazon's return policy does it suggest such a condition, The Wall Street Journal reports.

One customer who spoke with the Journal, Shira Golan, said she spends thousands of dollars a year on Amazon, buying household items and clothes. Golan said that she has on occasion asked for refunds on apparel or shoes when they arrive damaged or are the wrong item, and that the company closed her account permanently without warning, citing "an unusual number of problems."

"If I knew this would happen, I wouldn't buy clothes and shoes on Amazon," Golan said.

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Chris McCabe, a former policy enforcement investigator at Amazon, said that people tend to get banned from the retailer when they are "creating a lot of headaches." Yet another customer, Nir Nissim, who lives in Israel, said he had returned just one item this year and four items last year but was nevertheless banned by the company. He was eventually able to get his account reinstated.

Amazon reserves the right to terminate users' accounts at its discretion, but many banned customers said they had no idea the retailer would flag their routine returns as abuse, and that they received no warning before getting the notice. Read more about the company's shadowy policy at The Wall Street Journal.