Well, I knew it would happen to me eventually, but my well seasoned personal Amazon account finally got banned for using GCs to pay for shipments going to BGs. Any suggestions for creating a new one? I assume new e-mail and CC at the minimum, but I've heard mix things about billing address and IP.

Did about 500k with BFMR over the past few year. Had one lost package. However since their primary address was tagged as freight forwarder, it's been hard to do anything with shipping issues as Amazon would just say "freighter forwarder, f**k off", more or less. So I started shipping to secondary, thinking that they are post offices and should not be tagged as ff. About 3 weeks ago ALL my package to secondary (Salem) are delivered and not scanned. BFMR did some investigation and said they are not delivered. I'm out about $8k because of this. It's hard to believe that different packages shipped from different accounts, delivered on different days, signed by different people, all got stolen.

For BFMR, how did they respond to theft? After many years of buying for groups, looks like theft has happened. 4 items in a tracking and only 1 item was scanned in and got a message on a empty box for 1 other item and the remaining 2 items was unaccounted for.. I assume I am eating the cost of this as it is the risk of the game. but curious on what others have experienced

Not much. They said they believe an Amazon driver stole everything and asked me to ask for refund. If Amazon refuses, file a dispute.

I've stopped doing BGs at this point since it looks like Amzn really cracked down on BGs and most of them have their address flagged as FF, which means if anything happens to the packages sent there (missing, delayed, return takes too long to process, empty box, wrong item, etc), it would be a nightmare to deal with Amazon as most reps will just repeat the "contact ff, we won't do ...." line like a robot. It really isn't worth the headache given the razor thin margin and all the upkeep one has to do to track everything.

To add oil on fire, Amzn also seems to be very very trigger happy recently when deciding to suspend or outright ban accounts. I had my personal accounts banned twice for buying a couple thousand dollars worth of Apple products in one order. Once I get them unlocked, some of the orders are "missing" from history. Amazon will tell you it cancelled them because it suspected they were placed by hackers, but in reality they still ship. My cards got charged, I even got email notifications from Amazon telling me they shipped, but I cannot find them on Amazon's website to actually get the tracking numbers. Luckily I have my buyer IDs in the shipping addresses so they eventually got scanned under my account, but you can imagine my stress. I had to replace all my Amazon credit cards just to make sure that Amazon would not arbitrarily charge the "missing" orders without telling me. I also opened a couple of business accounts, thinking they are disposable (I have ebooks/movies under my personal accounts that I would not want to risk losing), but Amazon would just outright closed them after buying a couple of iPads not even worth more than a thousand dollars... And of course they still shipped and I don't have the tracking numbers again...

In short, the gravy train has finally come to a stop, in my view at least. Between BGs losing packages left and right, Amzn flagging all the them FFs, and closing accounts all over the place, it really is not a game that I can keep up with.

Thanks for teh sharing! I experienced the same thing twice recently. My account got suspended by Amazon. After one day or two, they reinstated my account, but all the orders got deleted. Those orders still shipped, but I could not get a tracking number. What a nightmire!

Can anyone recommend a good/online bank (with app check deposit) which will clear the full value of these buying group checks without a problem/flagging them?

USAA has frozen mine a few times, so I never use them to deposit checks.

I'm doing most of my buying with EMB, so they issue checks only - and no direct deposit...

Wow - thanks for this tip - I was eventually (after a LOT of interaction with OCW) been able to do this!

When I used to get eChecks, Wells Fargo didn't give me problems. They also didn't care about MOs back in the day.

Yes, Wells Fargo seems OK, but they have a 5k daily limit and a 15k monthly deposit limit...also they clear only $400.00 on the same day of deposit, remaining later.

Any others?

Is anyone using Direct Deposit with OnlineCheckWriter? I think they charge for this service, correct?

I have used Discover for this purpose many times. I have not encountered any issues so far.

All of my Prime Day orders so far have been cancelled. Hopefully it is just the Prime deals Amazon is getting upset about, and not everything they offer. I'm really hoping I don't get into a mess with orders "cancelled" but still getting charged for them...

Lesson Learned
 

Well, make that now all of my Amazon accounts I have ever had have been closed. Seems like they investigated closely enough to connect me even with the accounts that have never been used for buying groups. Buyer beware, and lesson learned.

This scared the .... out of me.

Discover? They have a bank also now?

Edited to Add: Just checked it out - seems like a great option - thanks!

Since 2000.

Ordered some apple watches to BFMR through Amazon. Amazon gave me a UPS tracking number. This number is invalid according to UPS. It doesn't say shipped or label created, it just says that there is no information associated with this tracking number. Amazon's own tracking says the order is delayed and does not show any tracking steps. Amazon's customer service is less than helpful. They can't do anything because it was sent to a freight forwarder apparently.

Any other options for me apart from charging back via my credit card since this is easily provable that Amazon is lying here? I assume Amazon will shut me down for charging back.

The risk of theft after delivery, risk of no delivery from amazon, complexity of tracking everything and long waits for payouts from BGs has finally forced me to re-evaluate this scheme and I will no longer be participating after all my in-transit orders are delivered.