Recap: Keeper Cards, Amazon Account Closed & More

View Comments (60)

• Wait a second, wouldnt amazon WANT you to have a high balance in your account? A high balance meand amazon is collecting interest on your money and doesnt have to give you anything, its essentially an secured debt.

  Amazon should really be encouraging people to do this since amazon can then take that money and invest it into their business without having to give them anything first.

  Somehow i feel that was a BS reason. There is probably a real reason amazon doesnt want to say.

  • Not only are they collecting interest on your money... they know that eventually you're going to spend that high balance on their products.

• "Middle class" has to be the most abused term in America, everyone believes themselves to be "middle class."

• The article identifies four cards as keepers. I think the Alliant card is the only keeper in the bunch. The others are only keepers if you have large investments at Schwab or Merrill Edge.

• Maybe its people who bought gc from ebay??

  • yea. could be one DP used.

    • Kinda fits the timeline. I know tons of $400 gc were sold a few months ago.

• dude. we need to stop spreading FUD about amazon GC balances. its not about having a huge balance. altho it may contribute to AI eyes on your account.

  EVERYBODY in the CC game and playing around with different banks should CLEARLY see what is happening.

  1) amazon is no different than a bank when it comes to KYC/AML

  2) looking like an "uncommon" and "suspicious" customer with "strange" activities always apply. this includes velocity limits and cycling. Its too fucking obvious if you are loading up 2k GC then spending 2k then loading 2k again.

  3) Amazon AI is like Skynet. If you live in CA and consistently load GCs that were bought in various states such as NYC and FL and TX and etc, flags will go off. Amazon can run background checks of where the GC are coming from. It becomes troubling when you go around buying discounted GC from many different stores like multiple different staples and using different CC. this will def be flagged after you load them into your account.

  4) i have no doubt that MPD had unusual activity. im surprised a person of his nature comes to such a basic conclusion that his high GC balance was the sole reason for shutdown. cmon Vinh. dont be ignorant. he had over $2500 of pre-orders. thats huge for a personal account. i also dont know where his GCs came from and his buying habits. but did anyone notice $28 came from ethbates? THATS HUGE. cmon guys. all of that matters.

  there are many more DPs that amazon utilizes. everybody just needs to be DL just like CC and bank churning and be mindful of what youre doing. having a high balance does in fact matter, but only because it becomes an "uncommon" DP, but thats just one factor.

  • MPD probably knows this, but he just wanted to write a clickbait headline to get people to read his blog.

  • @guest_670538

    Vinh does use that Hatchet stock photo an awful lot for a lot of posts - also seems like he has had a lot more issues/challenges/headaches with our hobby than others "it seems" he probably has some of the highest velocity among most of the bloggers with this being a side gig to his FT job.

    Perhaps he is just more vocal about the challenges.

    • yes. hes a heavy hitter so he takes things to the max without giving a shit. which is why hes shutdown often. its not just because hes vocal. plenty of other shutdown DP. but being so aggressive also makes things difficult to see true causes of shutdown. activity that is too obvious dont help to determine shutdown root cause like depo MO 20k in one day. thats not useful besides saying 20k is "excessive" in one day.

      in this case, everybody thinks having a large amzn balance is a reason for shutdown. thats just blatant ignorance. people who play this game should know better.

• The "Obscure" cards article talks about cards that are widely known, at least by readers of DoC's site. Nothing new there.

  • her blog is very different. and her target audience is very different. there are no heavy hitters reading her blog. its all about family and making life a bit easier for travel.

• Vinh's blog post about Amazon is misleading. He doesn't give any evidence for "high gift card balance" being the cause; Amazon's email doesn't say anything about that. He says "All of my Amazon gift card purchases were bought first hand", but also says some of it is from "an ethbates cashout". So he didn't buy all of the gift cards, and some of them came from a small new portal website that I've never heard of; who knows where they obtained their Amazon gift cards.

  But I agree with the general idea that it's crappy for Amazon to steal gift card balances.

  • smart guy. i like ur comment.

    ethbates is related to crypto. enough said...

• Did amazon take away Miles per days amazon gift card? Őr Did they just shut down híd amazon accou nt

• I'm really hoping the Amazon GC shutdowns are corner cases and not what we have to look forward to.

  While I'll never let my balance get as high as some, I do tend to keep a few hundred loaded, usually maxing out around $600-$700. With me it's always a slow ramp-up, and I often 'wipe out' the balance on Prime Day (the last two years I've used the balance to get a new mobile phone). The cards I buy aren't from questionable sources... nearly always physical cards from a brick-and-mortar store.

  Like others I tend not to keep receipts - there was previously no reason to - but I will going forward. My Amazon account is just over 20 years old, and it would be a shame for them to pull something like this with me now.

• The truth is, heavy amazon gift card users are probably some of amazons best customers. why would they think alienating and blacklisting them for no reason is a good idea?