I just spent over 2 hours chatting and calling Amazon customer service over an issue that should not be this difficult to resolve.
The problem started when I changed my Amazon Prime payment method from my Mastercard to my Amex. Since then, I've been getting charged for Prime, and now Amazon is telling me they have absolutely no record of these charges on their end.
I sent them screenshots of my credit card statements clearly showing the transactions. The charges are there. I've been paying for this membership every fucking month since December 2024, and somehow their system can't find them.
Their proposed solution? Contact my bank and both credit card issuers and dispute every single transaction going back to December 2024.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Why the hell should I have to spend hours contacting multiple financial institutions to dispute almost two years' worth of transactions when I'm literally providing Amazon with statements showing that I've been charged for their own membership?
The customer service experience made everything even worse. Throughout the entire process, I had to explain the situation over and over again as I was passed from one representative to another. Some of the representatives had such thick accents that I genuinely struggled to understand them over the phone. I'm not blaming anyone for their accent, but when you're already frustrated and have to keep repeating the same explanation, communication difficulties just make the experience even more exhausting.
Eventually, I received this email from Amazon:
"After reviewing your account, we are unable to locate this charge on our end. Since the transaction is not visible in our system, we are unable to process an adjustment or refund from our side.
We kindly ask that you contact your bank or card issuer directly to dispute the charge."
I've since looked online and found other people describing similar issues going back years. How is this still a problem? How can a company the size of Amazon charge customers repeatedly, have those charges appear on their credit card statements, and then claim they have no record of them?
Has anyone else experienced this, particularly after switching payment methods? Did you manage to get Amazon to resolve it, or did you actually have to dispute every transaction with your banks?
I'm honestly baffled that this is considered an acceptable resolution.