Amazon locks home owner out of Amazon account over allegation by Amazon delivery driver

A home owner was locked out of their Amazon account for nearly a week, after a delivery driver from Amazon misheard an automated message from their Eufy doorbell. The delivery driver had a package to deliver at the address of the home owner, and "reported receiving racist remarks", which were later proven to be a false accusation, as the doorbell said "Excuse me, can I help you?". The home owner was locked out of their account over this before the investigation was completed, which also suspended the Amazon Echo devices of the home owner.

Background

The smart devices that Amazon offers require an associated account. The company also has their online e-commerce platform, which also requires having an Amazon account. It is likely that consumers use the same account for both their purchases and their smart devices of the same company, if they have those. But even if that is not the case, and they would use separate Amazon accounts, Amazon would still hold a position of power as these devices do not function without an Amazon account, or at least intent users to have an account as a soft requirement to access all the features. For instance, the echo smart speakers devices require logging in to an Amazon account on the Alexa App.

Locked out of account after delivery

The incidents raises concerns about what is proportionate in this scenario, where there is an accusation by a delivery driver allegedly being harassed. Safety of the drivers are also a factor, which the home owner acknowledges:

Let me be clear: I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation. It seems more sensible to impose a temporary delivery restriction or purchasing ban on my account. Submitting video evidence from multiple angles right after my initial call with the executive appeared to have little impact on their decision to disable my account.

The home owner later clarified that they self hosted many of the services, which made the effect of the lock out far softer but still concerning if it were to happen to the average home owner.

Amazon's response

The account was unlocked again after the investigation found out that the claim was false. Although the story made the news, it did not feature an apology from Amazon for their decision to lock a home owner out of their account over a false accusation. There was also no mention on whether Amazon thought the measure was proportionate in the e-mail to the customer, just that the account would be temporarily suspended.

There are also some broader concerns with this practice, in this case the home owner could still access their recordings of the incident, as the doorbell made a recording. But in the cases where there would not be a recording it would be hard to prove for the home owner that they were innocent. While it is not the case for Ring doorbells as they have separate Ring accounts, although Ring is owned by Amazon, the situation would become even harder for the home owner if they could not access the video footage as consequence of being locked out of an account.

Consumer response

The main concern is about the consequence of locking someone out of their Amazon account, which can have further consequences if that same account is used for home automation with Amazon products. It gives Amazon control over products that have already been sold to the customer, which would normally keep functioning if they were not from the same company.