Amazon freezes account, demands bank fax

Amazon freezes account, demands bank statement via fax

A Huawei P8 Lite order worth about €150 on sale. First purchase on Amazon.es. A newly generated virtual card and a €2 charge that the bank identifies as standard verification. Hours later, an email: account suspended until the buyer sends banking documents to a fax number. It sounded like a joke. It wasn't.

The case describes a mechanism that, according to other thread participants, is recurring. Amazon requires account verification by sending papers via fax to 91 123 04 21 —or a London address— from a sender like verificacion-direccion@amazon.es. A second email then arrives with a request that defies logic: asking the bank itself to send the fax and make calls. The buyer had already sent their statement via e-fax showing a €200 balance. It didn't work. They received the same message at least ten times.

Why banks cannot send that fax

Here lies the deadlock. A bank cannot disclose customer data to a third party without a court order. Banking secrecy prohibits it, and Spain's Data Protection Law adds another layer: the data belongs to the holder, not the requester. The conversation with the financial institution described by the affected user is clear: they were warned that sending any data would be a mistake, because requesting it is already illegal. And the bank will not send it voluntarily, regardless of what the buyer does.

Some view this as a deliberately designed dead end. If verifying a client's identity requires a procedure that the law makes impossible, the practical result is that the account never reopens. Meanwhile, the email repeats the same template over and over.

Fax as a filter: a trick used by telecoms

Some recall that for years, telecom operators required a fax to cancel services, and insurance companies copied them. It was not a technical requirement. It was a barrier: in a business that runs entirely online, asking for a fax is equivalent to hoping the customer gives up. If they quit, the problem solves itself. If they persist, the template holds.

In this case, the filter works in two directions. It stops legitimate buyers and turns any complaint into an endurance test. Ten identical emails are ten chances for the affected person to hang up and shop elsewhere.

Suspicious customer or broken system?

Reactions are not unanimous. Some defend Amazon: they argue its automatic filters flag accounts due to specific discrepancies and that suspensions always respond to something, even if the customer doesn't know it. Others, the majority in the conversation, reply that a first order cannot raise suspicion and that, if the problem were real, the logical step would be to close the account outright, not confuse users by demanding papers no one will send.

Experienced voices offer counterpoints. One user claims to have made 20,000 purchases with cards from various banks with zero issues, while another states they have gone ten years without a single customer service problem. This is precisely why the foreign case is puzzling: it clashes with personal experience. And the uncomfortable question running through the matter is: would anyone send their bank statement via fax to a store?

Laws Amazon seems to ignore

The issue shifts to regulatory grounds. It is pointed out that the site does not clearly identify its registered office or tax ID (CIF), which would conflict with Spain's Information Society Services Act. Cookie regulations and data protection laws are also mentioned. One participant points to the fiscal structure, with the Luxembourg parent company invoicing the Spanish subsidiary, as context for explaining why the company might operate under its own rules in each country.

Consumer frameworks do not help. Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007 sets a two-year warranty and fifteen days for withdrawal —which Amazon extends to thirty—. But requiring the intervention of a customer's bank appears in no article. There is no law supporting this.

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With the account blocked, papers sent, and the bank legally refusing to act, the buyer continues waiting for a different email. They have received ten identical ones. The detail that closes the circle, according to one participant: the department handling these closures was once called cis@amazon.es. No one has yet explained what turns a first €150 order into a threat.