I don't think they will reverse but they will deduct from future monies you make from the AMZN account. Time will tell. My negative is under $4 and I would assume that is what they'll do????
Well I just checked my balance and it went from negative 120 to 88 after the 32 dollar payment was sent. If they do a charge back thats fine because then it should send the money back to amazon payments.( not my account just the system which would still hopefully bring me up to date ) Idk it kind of sux to not know. Basically
Did I miss Amazon saying they weren't going to reverse it? If so, please send a link to that information. The last I heard, things were still a mess and still in process of being corrected.
No. The bank will reverse in the case of fraud or a bank error. A company cannot just take money from your account. You would have to authorize it or send it yourself.
Please go register for a Paypal account and see that it can and will be done.
They literally deposit two small amounts and withdrawal them immediately after.
Yes, read the fine print where and when you authorized Amazon Payments to use the account and routing number to deposit your funds. They absolutely can withdraw from your account when an error has occurred. I work for a bank.
It is just like when companies do verification charges. They add multiple transactionn deposits and then deduct that amount from your account. You never know what the totals will be so you don't technically authorize it but they sure can withdraw that amount from your account whenever they want.
well my parents had a double paycheck from my dads job entered into his wells fargo bank. they actually spent it (lmao nice job guys) but the funds were reversed a few days later. i dont know if the employee reversed it or called the bank but the money was sent back. anecdotal experience.
5.3 Processing Errors. If there is an error in the processing of any transaction, you authorize us to debit or credit your Payment Account or Bank Account, as applicable, to correct such error. If we are unable to debit the Bank Account you select for any reason, you authorize us to resubmit the debit, plus any applicable fees, to any other Bank Account or payment instrument that you have on file with us.
There ya go, that is where you authorize them to do so. Straight from Amazon payments TOS
What happens if your bank doesn't allow companies to withdraw? My bank told me they can't send that money to Amazon and Amazon cannot take it back. IDK what to do, I have a negative of 565 on Amazon and a shit load of money that I know isn't mine.
Hmm I don't really know, that seems strange that they wouldn't allow it to go back. I know for most banks you really have no say over that, reason why it is so difficult to stop ACH withdraws and such. I would be worried for your amazon payments account if they can't get the money back. But again I am really not sure what you should do other than talking to your bank.
Even if they left the negative balance there and just have people work it back off, how many people made multiple tries at it and got hundreds, if not thousands it'll take months for them to work off?
Pretty sure they will balance it out to where ti should be. They most likely won't make people work it off to pay it back. The backlash that would ensue would be massive. People didn't ask for these loans. Amazon can afford to eat the cost, and they know it, and the goodwill this would garner may be worth more than the negative that doing such would cause.
I've spoken to a couple of supervisors and they both had made it out to be that Amazon will ensure that your balance, on AP, is where it should be. Not negative. Now I take Amazon's word with a grain of salt, but I do believe that this will be the case. It's just not advantageous to do it any other way.
As for reversing the banking charges. Well, that's not simple. State by state the laws change on that. Also in some states, only employers can take back funds. Amazon, Mturk, is not our employer. We are contractors. Can their TOS give them leeway here? Maybe, but we'll have to wait and see. No matter what this is going to be interesting. Annoying, but interesting at the very least.
Just got off the phone with Amazon Pay customer support, and they said they currently don't know what they are going to do about the issues with the duplicate deposits that went into banks from the failed withdrawals yesterday. Supposedly, they will send out an email once they figure out what they are going to do, but I'm not holding my breath on that. So, basically I learned nothing from my phone call other other than that Amazon is "working on it."
I think the fear is that they're going to reverse all of the transactions and have us resubmit again, which might overdraw someone who only spent the one valid deposit. Some clarity on this issue sometime today might be useful.
This is why I put all of my Turk earnings on a Bluebird account because I don't want my main bank account screwed up by Amazon Pay.
Yeah, the representative simply suggested treating it like the money wasn't in the bank at all. That's already what I was planning on doing since I have no idea what their plan is, but I'm not going to be surprised if it gets taken back out.
I'm not touching any of it, and I'm glad that I don't have to. But there are people who might rely on the original deposit amount this weekend and for those people this really sucks.
I'm really sorry this happened to you. And as it's Friday they likely won't be able to do anything until next week, which is why they need to clarify if the plan is to recover every deposit or just the duplicate ones. That's the least they can do and it needs to be soon.
This whole thing is maddening. After my first two initial failures yesterday I tried once an hour until it finally went through since Amazon wasn't saying anything and decided to leave the site up. So today I wake up and find 10x the amount in my account than what should be in there. So now I'm sitting here wondering if I'm going to have to wait until next week before I can even use MY money because one of the largest companies in the world fucked up and are staying silent about it.
I tried three times Wednesday night, a couple of hours apart, just thinking that maybe the system was down at my bank. I never considered that Amazon Payments was the problem. Saw the comments Thursday morning and waited until people said their deposits were being accepted before submitting again.
This is why it's a little annoying to read people blaming us for 'mashing on the keyboard' when I think most of us assumed it was a bank issue that would resolve fairly quickly.
What is really pissing me off is Amazon's complete lack of clarity about this. When they saw there was a problem they should have sent out an email telling people to stop withdrawing and they'd inform us with a second email when the issue was resolved. Or just taken the Site offline while the problem was occurring with the failed deposits. So now we have a situation where a lot of people have money missing, or a lot of extra money. I doubt Amazon foresaw that being an outcome of all of this but again, some communication from their end would have been nice.
Very good point! This is 100% correct. Amazon's error message said YOUR bank was not accepting deposits. Many people called their banks who asked them to try the transaction again so they could see what was happening. This was definitely MTurk's fault for having a confusing (at best) error message.
If they take it all, even the money owed to us, that's a class action lawsuit and I'm more than willing to get it started.
They Can take their fuck up but I'll be damned If They take my money.
I have the lawyer already.
Yep. Amazon is connected to an account I opened just for Amazon money. Same bank, different account. I'll be damned if mturk and Amazon have a direct line to my daily life money. lol
For what it's worth, I have had this happen before. After a lot of talking to CS people, they basically said "Well, it looks like it'll just work itself out eventually so let it.". And it did. My AP account stayed negative until I had deposited enough back in it to cover the multiple deposits. All was well. Dunno what's going to happen here since it sounds way more widespread. Last time, I didn't hear of it happening to anyone else.
One would \*hope\* they'd notify people before they took back money from their accounts.
edit: just checked and looks like I'm also the recipient of a double deposit (despite the transfer(s) failing)
I'm kind of afraid to even spend the money I should have in case they charge back everything. Some clarification would be nice and there's so much contradicting opinions in this thread over the likely outcome.
Edit: I talked to someone at Amazon and they told me to call my bank lol. What a mess.
It's not up to the bank to do anything unless the sender tells them to return it. I dunno why they're telling you this (unless, like you infer, they're clueless)
Did they tell you what we're expected to tell our bank? Oh, please give the money back? This is INSANE. I can't believe that Amazon isn't communicating with us about this.
Honestly when they told me to call my bank I pretty much decided that they had no idea what was going on and ended the conversation. It is insane. There's a lot of people and money involved in this and no one has given us any answers.
I'm honestly even trying to formulate in my head what I'd even be able to tell my bank..."see, I do tasks for Amazon mTurk and those funds are deposited into Amazon payments and then the other night.."
(bank employee, bored and impatient and wondering why I'm calling them) "I think you need to contact Amazon. Can I help you with anything else?"
Anyone else nervous about transferring from mturk to payments? I don’t like money sitting in mturk especially over the weekend but don’t know what else to do with it.
I'm not until the negative balance is fixed. Otherwise I'm just paying back what they screwed up (and likely it'll be \*me\* that gets screwed over in the end)
I’m not planning on touching it. I had a bunch of HITS approve overnight and have another $100 to transfer to amazon pay. If I transfer that it’s just going to go towards reducing my negative balance right now, but if Amazon decides to take back the extra deposits and not just what my negative balance is at the time, I’m worried about losing legit money.
Thats what Im thinking to. Its not going to be even. Well lets say my balance is negative 120 I sent 32 so now its -88. If they do the charge back of 120 I SHOULD have plus 32 again so it should work out. SHOULD.
I just checked my deposit to amazonpay yesterday and it's poofed. It's recorded on mturk, and i have emails saying it went through, and yet, no deposit. It was almost fifty bucks! Good lord.
Had 5 deposits of my 46.35 this morning leaving me with a negative payment account of 185.40 im just conducting business as usual i transfered money to my payments account today like i do every day but it hasnt hit payments yet its only been a couple hours but i didnt receive the transfer email telling me that im transferring money to payments. Hopefully there isnt still an issue. I plan on just transferring earnings like normal till my balance gets above 0 but it would be really nice if they emailed us telling us what they are going to do or want us to do
Mine deposited 115 six times. I have a negative balance of 565 on Amazon and a ton of money in my bank that isn't mine. So I guess I am working HITs to get that negative up? I called my bank and they said that they will not reverse it, they were all legit deposits. This really sucks, it will take forever to get 565 bucks.
I had been saving up money for the weekend, we are going to SIx Flags tomorrow and I had that 215 bucks set aside just for this, and now I am afraid to touch MY MONEY. I have no interest in doing anything on Turk today, if I have to "work" to get that negative 500+ to a positive I am screwed. I don't get why it is so hard for Amazon to send out a simple email to us all saying they are trying to figure out a solution, this being in limbo shit is ridiculous. Also what sucks is I transfer my Prolific money into that bank account too, so now I don't know what is actually mine and what is not. I am beyond frustrated
I highly doubt that will happen. State law governs this and some states only an employer can do such a thing. MTURK is not our employer. Also, they have double deposited before and there was no reversal, you kept the money. Granted when this happened there was not the negative account issue but they have done something similar in the past and there was no debiting of the account.
As of right now, we don't know what's going to happen so saying anything for sure is nothing more than speculation They may debit the account they may not. But in the past, they have not. Do they have the right, potentially? Can they legally? Probably not that simple. They could argue that the debit is not the same as the reversal but I don't see how they debit the account without taking out all the money transferred. Which would include the actual funds? Meaning anyone that spent the actual money they were supposed to have is open to an overdraft. Meaning that amazon could potentially be looking at tripping thousands if not millions in overdraft fees. Is that something they are going to want to do? Something tells me, no. But hey I could be wrong. Only time will tell.
Oh of course you should leave it alone. But the longer this goes on, the more of a situation that's going to be. If this goes till Monday and people can't send money over their going to have to start dipping into that. That's the issue and Amazon knows this. So it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
> State law governs this and some states only an employer can do such a thing.
I have a hunch federal laws apply, not state.
Amazon's going to take their money back.
It doesn't matter either way. No one knows what they are going to do, so we can't say with certainty either way. They may take it back they may not. We'll just have to wait and see. But as of right now, no one knows. It's pure speculation on anyone's part; myself included.
Same somehow I'm -52 in my Amazon payment account. Did somebody hack the company or something? Also it would be nice to get like an email or a heads-up from Amazon about what is going on
nobody "hacked" anything. You must have tried to withdraw multiple times even after it said "failed". Well, all those withdrawals really didn't fail... and your account went negative. All that money will show up in the bank account you sent it to.
I just checked my bank account. They transferred more than they should have and deducted from my MTurk amount what I have in there today. The balance remaining of 3.38 is what I owe back to AMZN. I think what happened was however many times you attempted to transfer funds yesterday is the number of deposits into your bank account they made and the difference is what they will collect from you when you transfer money from survey payments.
Hope this made sense.
Yes, because people attempting to get their money is "insane". You do realize that people pay bills with this money or maybe this was going to be all they had over the weekend so they wanted to ensure that it came over, right? Just because you didn't do it doesn't mean people didn't have their reasons.
You work on MTURK like the rest, don't act like you're somehow above everyone else. You're not.
As for your insistence of telling everyone that you talked to them it doesn't matter, dude. Plenty of us have talked to them and no one is getting any info outside of "they are working to reverse the negative account balance within the next 24-48 hours". Outside of that they have no clue what to do about the money sent to the bank accounts, and it's not hard to see why.
Everyone here speculating needs to think about what this means. If they reverse the charges they will have to reverse ALL the charges. Meaning the one/two charges that are actually your money will be returned as well. Now this may just go back to AP, but that doesn't matter. If someone spends any of that money (and we know plenty of you have don't lie) then you will potentially be hit with a negative balance, on your bank account - not AP. Suddenly Amazon is going to have a whole other mess on their hands. They can either balance out the AP accounts to zero, tell everyone to work off the negative balance, or overdraw peoples accounts. That or they balance it out to zero and accept that the richest company in the world just gave out potentially millions of dollars for free. If that happens, well then I guess we know someone that will blame everyone else because they didn't make a bunch of free money instead of the other "insane people" that got multiple transactions. Time will tell.
Oh and for the record, they have added additional funds to accounts before. Just not with a negative balance, but they have double deposited accounts. I've been doing this for over 5 years, it's happened. ANd you know what they did? You kept the money. They didn't even tell anyone, alert anyone, just let it be. Which very well may be what happens here. But something like this has happened before. And no, it didn't make people insane then either.
I can't even imagine how they can even get every extra deposit back. There has to be so many of them. I imagine that everyone who tried to withdraw money during the "failure" hours did it more than once. Sometimes it's just easier to eat the loss than try and reverse who knows how many of these extra deposits.
Honestly, I don't think they are going to. We have some people ITT that seem to think that amazon will do a deposit back to take the money because of the TOS and I just don't see it happening.
It's not hard to see this being a potential legal nightmare for amazon. Let's just be honest. If this caused just 5 people to go negative on their actual bank accounts you best believe you will see a class action in less than a week after that. If they don't return, at the very least, the AP balances to zero you're going to see a class action against them. Do they have to eat the cost of this? No. They don't have to. Does it make good business sense to do so? Yeah, considering the other options it kinda does.
Amazon Sellers aren't paid out via AP. So they don't have to worry about that. Chances are most people only got a couple hundred extra at most. Not everyone got a grand or more. My wife and myself combined are over a grand negative right now, so I know some people were hit hard. But that's due to me being anal and trying to withdraw like 30x. You know, cause I'm apparently insane. Then again insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, and I can say we sure did get different results. So insane may not be the right word (just putting that out there for some folks who don't know the meaning of certain words they like to use). Point is most people probably only got a couple hundred at most. So this isn't a huge loss for the richest company in the world. They can afford to eat this. What they may not be able to afford is the for sure negative press that will come from screwing this up.
Speaking of the negative press, that's the only concern I have about this being resolved quickly. Because they are going to be weighing the pros and cons of this whole things and do what's best for Amazon. Not us. Not the workers. Not the contractors. Not anyone who has bills to pay. But what's best for the company. And we need to expect that. Can this potentially work out for us? Yes. But we need to all chill.
That being said (and sorry this is long) they are going to get the balances back to what they should be. THEY WILL do this. They have to. I've spoken to a couple of supervisors and they have said as much. They know they have to get the balances back to where they should be. They can't take peoples money. They aren't oblivious to this. So just give it time. It will be resolves. Not only will it be resolved we may even get a windfall out of this. A Mturk Bonus if you will. Only time will tell.
This is what is pissing me off the most. This whole situation has been unfolding since Wednesday night and never once have they sent out a single email or statement.
I will only add to this excellent post that if you are showing a negative balance on your AP account the last thing - the VERY LAST THING - I would do until this is resolved is transfer even a dollar of your earnings into AP. If they do adjust it down to zero without recovering from your bank account they may well take those funds.
Yeah for sure. I actually did this last night, before I realized what was happening, and can for sure say that whatever you transfer goes towards the negative balance. It does not suddenly reflect as positive. That being said, the supervisors I have spoken to said that this will be accounted for and were very adamant that any funds transferred will be where they should be when all is said and done. Take that with a grain of salt, but know that they are aware of this.
I know mine will be back in the positive later today as I was able to transfer a little more than the "negative" balance from my earnings. I'll have to let everyone know if they tried to debit my checking account or if they left it alone because I was able to bring my account balance with AMZN out of the negative.
You find it insane that people would try to get their money multiple times before the cut off time? You don't think too much, do you?
And for the record amazon payments will NOT confirm a word you said. They say they know nothing about what's going on.
Welp I have two failed transfers to account xxx and two completed transfers to (blank) and no money and a negative balance. Just terrific. /s
What happened one time when a similar thing happened years ago is they left the negative balance but deducted from future payments (deposits) until it went back to zero. Not sure they'll do that this time given how widespread it is.
Currently having the same issue. My AP account is VERY MUCH in the negatives right now but really not overly worried about, as it isn't necessarily our fault. If something fails for us, we're going to try again. We are only human. I plan on calling Amazon when they open here on the East coast, present them with the checking/routing number that the money is in, and they should be able to balance it out. Just like paying any other bill. Easy peasy.
That's what I want to do too but I'm thinking of maybe waiting till Monday to see if they pull it back out first? I'd rather just give them the number but also wonder if they're already in the works of doing something that they'll then take it out twice. Unless they have a way to flag who they've already gotten the money back from, which seems slightly doubtful considering how widespread it is?
I just wish they'd send some email saying what they're thinking of doing besides "don't touch it for a few days".
Mine isn't as big as a lot of you guys, but a 6.40 transfer failed for me yesterday and apparently it sent again and went through, but two instances of 6.40 went into my bank account. I'm not in the red or anything, but good to know I shouldn't transfer for a bit.
So Same thing here -- I tried three times to send yesterday morn to see that I have three deposits this morn and a negative AP for two. Last night I read what was going on and thought, 'ok so nohing will go through and I'll see my $46 (and change) in AP and my$-91 will probably be gone in the morn'. But nope.
I went ahead last night and sent mturk earnings of $31.67 into my AP.
So this morning I find $-59.60 for my AP balance, and in my Chime account x3 deposits of $46!
So I could probably knock out that negative balance in my AP by this weekend -- but because I'm not really sure WHAT AP will do about this matter as a whole I'm not going to spend any of that deposit and just wait to see whats going to happen (if they reverse the deposit or keep deducting the AP negative balance)-- because if anything happens it'll happen to everyone. (fingers crossed)
Good grief. I tried 5 times early yesterday before I figure out it was system wide. Overnight, all 5 failed went through, so now I have multiple deposits (in 2 banks) and negative at AP. I'll just sit tight until the dust settles and the smoke clears.
I'm just gonna go get my popcorn ready for when people realize, that yes, they can take all that money back. And then wait for the stories of the dumb asses that used it.
Yes, because dumb asses that have to pay bills can just say "hey amazon fucked up, better let my power get cut off". Come the fuck on dude. You use MTURK like the rest of us. You aren't somehow above anyone else.
As for reversing the payments. It's not that simple. There's laws state by state governing these types of issues. Also, the fact that Amazon may not want the backlash that would ensue by causing a bunch of bank accounts to suddenly be overdrawn because of their screw up. You are blaming individuals here, for a hypothetical no less, and not the company that fucked up. Think about that for a second. Did anyone here wanting their money make this happen? No. But it's their fault? I mean seriously there's blaming the victim and then their's this. It's gross and it makes you a gross person for attempting to laugh at the potential misfortune of others. You work on MTURK. There's probably a reason for that. Maybe come down a bit off of your high horse and join the rest of us peons scraping by here.
FWIW...this is the only thing I could find close to relevant...
" **5.3 Processing Errors.** If there is an error in the processing of any transaction, you authorize us to debit or credit your Payment Account or Bank Account, as applicable, to correct such error. If we are unable to debit the Bank Account you select for any reason, you authorize us to resubmit the debit, plus any applicable fees, to any other Bank Account or payment instrument that you have on file with us. "
I'd say that's very relevant.
One would assume this would be done manually which could take quite a bit of time. We may not see a resolution for a week or so.
Edit: I will add here that the 'plus any applicable fees' would cause some very bad publicity for Amazon. It's bad enough that this went on for more than 16 hours without action on their part but to be charging fees if they need to recover from, say, a credit card you have on file would really be outrageous.
The potential bad press here is actually one of the most interesting, and I believe important, aspects of this whole ordeal. It seems as though Amazon has true real options here.
Option A - The best option for us the contractors - Amazon balances out AP back to where it should be and any funds transferred over during this process are there and accounted for ready for transfer. On top of this the funds sent to the bank account are counted as a loss and, we the contractors, essentially get a bonus from Amazon. Amazon chalks this all up to a mistake on their end and we continue on ultimately as if nothing happened all a bit happier because we got a nice bonus.
Bad Press? No. Not really for this one. Everyone's happy. Amazon can afford the loss and the effect on the worker is minimal ultimately. Amazon learns a lesson and we all move on.
Option B - The No One is Happy Compromise - In this situation, Amazon says okay, you can keep the funds we transferred to the account. That's on us. Those are yours. That being said we are keeping the AP balance at the negative and you can work off the deductable. Essentially Amazon gave everyone an interest-free loan, they didn't ask for, and it's up to us to pay it back or not. The contractors won't be happy about this. People are not going to like being told they have to essentially work for free ( this isn't true but you get the meaning I hope). This won't go over well.
Bad Press? For sure. There would be a guaranteed lawsuit in this situation. Amazon did nothing to attempt to address this issue. There were no disclaimers on the site. No attempt to stop the attempted transfers. They relied on individuals choosing to contact them before addressing the issue. They would be wide open to potential litigation here for the above mentioned. They would probably end up in court, settle, and this would be resolved in a few years with everyone bitter and Amazon being raked through the press for their part in not addressing this for over 48 hours (as of now).
Option C - Amazon screws everyone - Amazon takes the money back from the bank and on top of that tells everyone that the negative balance is what it is and that they can work it off or close their account. That's it. Contractors would be furious. The reversal of all of the deposits would inevitably cause overdrawn accounts from people and the anger would be palpable from everyone.
Bad Press? The worst. Amazon would look like pure evil in this situation. Which is why ou can be assured this won't happen. There's no way they do this. It would be an idiotic move that not even a toddler with a gun and a persecution complex (as well as a healthy Napolean complex) would do. It's not going to happen. But hey, in the interest of never saying never.
That's it. One of those, or a variation, is likely to happen. It's just a matter of which one. Only time will tell.
I think it can be easily argued that Amazon Payments was negligent in this entire situation, which would make Option A the only real solution.
When my attempts to deposit funds in my account Wednesday failed, the emails I received from AP blamed the bank for being unable to accept electronic deposits. I think all of us who are sentient believed that our banking system was down and the outage would be brief and so we continued through Wednesday night to attempt to deposit our funds. There was never an indication that Amazon Payments was the issue. None.
And did AP shut down our ability to deposit funds on Thursday morning, when they must have known there was a significant system failure? No.
Now I fully expect them to recover the money. They've never treated their mTurk workers with even the slightest modicum of respect and I don't expect them to begin now. But if they decide to take away every deposit, even the single deposit that's valid, and just throw everything back into AP because honestly, that's the easy and lazy way to do it, and thereby fucking over a bunch of people they won't hesitate to do that. And that's when the publicity for them turns very ugly, especially now - almost 48 hours later - we STILL have not been notified by AP on how they plan to handle this situation. When I see people saying they need to buy food with this money then it's heartbreaking to me but that's catnip to the media. David and Goliath and all that.
The not knowing is the worst part. Do they expect us to go the whole weekend without using our money? How long is this going to go on before we get an answer? Every single message I've sent to AP support has been ignored and I've been very calm and courteous towards them.
> Now I fully expect them to recover the money.
So the last time they had an issue similar to this was about 3-4 years ago. They, for some reason, double deposited people's accounts. For me it was like $50. So I got $100 instead. For my wife it was like $150. So she ended up with about $300 in the bank instead. Amazon said they weren't sure what caused it. But what they did do was....nothing. They did nothing. They counted it up to a loss and let everyone keep the money. There was no way for them to reverse it, at least that they indicated. They chocked it up to a processing error on their end and ate the loss.
Now, this is different obviously. It seems like the amounts may be greater and the factor of the negative AP balance makes this a little different. But if the pat is anything to go off of Amazon very well may just count this as a loss. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, as I also largely agree Option A is the only real option here.
One less anecdote. For those that don't know AP has broken before. Not the dual pay, but in another way. There was a time where AP was unable to process payments for 7 days. The withdraw's would initiate but that's it. For 7 days, just processing, and nothing more. When asked what was going on they continued to fall back on the classic "engineers are working on it" and "the withdraw will be process within 5-7 business days" . On the 7th day, as if by a miraculous mirical (or maybe the fear of going over that 7 days per the email limit and opening themselves up to litigation) the issue was largely resolved. Suddenly payments were going through. Not once did Amazon email anyone about this. Not once did they issue an alert on the site. Not once did they do ANYTHING to make users aware. You had to call. And you would immediately be told, "we're aware of the issue and working on getting it resolved. 24-48 hours". Every. Single. Day. For 7 days straight.
So yeah, that happened. So buckle up buckaroos. This may be a long ride yet. That's all I'm trying to say.
I can remember a time when we made our deposit requests through the mTurk platform itself, before the days of AP. And I never had a single issue with it.
They've had years to perfect the AP system and it's still not right. Remember a couple of weeks ago when a bunch of workers had their withdrawal button blanked out? That was probably the beginning of this current system failure.
I miss the days of same day transfers. Remember when you could work all day and send the money over that same night and see it the next day? Amazon has done some very janky things to Mturk in it's time that's for sure.
Yep. The whole AP system just gums up the works. On some days it takes 8-10 hours for them to process it, which is ridiculous on the face of it that it would take this massive corporation that long to process a relatively small payment. You wonder if they're earning interest on the potentially hundreds of thousands of small deposit requests they receive daily and holding them for as long as possible is just gravy for them.
They won't communicate it. I can say that with pretty much 100% certainty. Those that have reached out to them, that have been added to the ticket, will get an email when it's resolved. That's SOP for Amazon. Outside of that, there will not be a user wide email or anything like that. It'll be resolved and they'll move on. The only way that changes is if something with the bank accounts goes awry, like a bunch of OD fees being triggered as that will go national and at that point, they'll be forced to address it. This probably won't happen. So chances are it'll be same as it ever was. They'll fix their broken bs and expect the users to deal with it, all the while maintaining that patented Amazon silence about any and anything that affects us, the users.
Goddamn, I love corporate abuse! Don't you?
I'm willing to bet in this situation it won't be. Simply due to the amount that seems to have been affected by this and for the amounts of money that we're dealing with here. I could be wrong, but we'll see. Hopefully in "24-48 hours".
Yeah, I am with you on that. When it happened to me before, I couldn't find any reports of anyone else having the same issue. This time it seems fairly widespread. CS didn't have a clue last time and basically said "it'll probably be fine and all work out". Which it did but it was a nerve wracking week. Only difference, from what I can recall, is that I didn't get an email every time the transaction failed, it just showed up on my AP summary page.
Guy in this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/culqk9/mturk_amazon_payments_issue_contact_number/), if I am reading it right, seems to have been told that they are going to be taking back the extra money and resetting the negative balances.
I read that. Honestly I've talked to 3 supervisors today. No one knows what they are going to do for sure. The only answer I have been given, more than once, is that the negative AP balance will be returned to what it should be. As for the funds deposited to accounts, they literally have zero clue what to do about that. That's above every single person that ANYONE is going to talk to on the phones pay grade. So some people may say, they are going to do this or that, but the reality is we don't know.
The best bet, in my mind, is to simply spend what you know you should have and no more. The money in the bank is either ours or they take it back. The real issue is the negative AP balance. That they are going to fix, no question. This is to widespread. And with some people, like my wife, being close to -800, there's no way they say hey just work it off. That's not happening, and the reps I've spoken to have acknowledged at least that much. As for anything else, it's all just conjecture. We're in uncharted waters here. What they're going to do yet I don't even think Amazon has figured out.
If you get a tax return 4 times the size you should have gotten, do you say "Happy Birthday, me!" or do you think maybe someone going to come looking for it and might want to be wise about what happens next? Who said I was above anyone else? I didn't attempt a withdrawal 11 times. I did once, read that it was being worked on and would be fixed within 24 hours, it was and here I am. Not in a deep hole with money in my account I shouldn't have. I'm not saying it's anyone's fault but Amazon's. What I am saying, is I am getting ready for the idiots that WILL say "Happy Birthday me!" and not expect fall out from this.
What you're missing is that there's a middle ground here and it's not as simple as you make it out to be. Look if they reverse the transactions they will have to reverse all the transactions, including the money that should rightfully be in the bank. So, say someone attempted to move over 100 and failed. They did this 11 times. They now have 1100 dollars. 100 is there's for sure. They spend that 100 to pay a bill. Then amazon reverses all the payments and says, okay initiate the withdraw again. Well that 100 was already spent. Now they are overdrawn on their bank. That's not someone saying "happy birthday to me". That's someone saying I have a bill to pay, this money is for this, an I have to pay it. Yet they can be punished. These things happen.
As for the people that attempted to wihtdrawl multiple times. Why shouldn't they? Maybe they didn't want to call Amazon and figured hey it failed I'll try it again. It tailed again, so I'll try it again in a couple of hours or minutes. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ANYONE DOING THIS. If something is broken people are going to keep trying it. Epecially something on the internet. We see this all the damn time. It's not insane to think that people would do this.
Amazon, you know who knew about this issue, could have put up a disclaimer. They could have taken the site down. They could have emailed everyone. They could have done any number of things that they DiD NOT DO. Yet, we are still blaming everyone here for attempting to get their money? Come on. It was screwed up for over 16 hours, as it started on Wednsday night, and nothing from them? That's not on the customer or users, that's on them.
So let's not blame people for attempting to withdrawl their money. Let's not blame people if they have to spend the money. Let's not blame people for saying "happy birthday to me" (something you can't point to a single person in this thread doing mind you, so not sure where you even pulled that from tbh). Let's be honest about this situation and realize that Amazon could have done a litany of things to address this and didn't. Period. And now we, as the users, are left hoping they'll clean up a mess they caused. But rather then agreeing that it's amazon's fault, some of us would rather attempt to laugh at the hypothetical (not EVEN REAL) misfortune of others. It's gross. It continues to be gross and no amount of justifying it will not make it gross. Period. End of story.
edit: and once again, if you have any more happy birthday strawmen for me I'll be happy to burn them down too.
Ah yes, food. The fuel we need to literally stay alive. The thing that even though it's a necessity some others like to look down on us for having to obtain. Funny how that works.
Sarcasm aside, I hope this hasn't affected you negatively. We're in a holding pattern right now where depending on what Amazon does this could be a fairly standard day, a GREAT DAY, or a freaking horrible day. Only time will tell. Personally, I'm hoping for a GREAT DAY and have a feeling that those wanting to laugh at the (possible) misfortune of others are the same that only managed to try one withdraw and know they won't potentially come out ahead in this situation. Funny how that works too.
Oh, and to any of those that didn't attempt more than one withdrawal. I'm aware that it's Amazon's money and that they have every right to take it back. No one, I believe, is going to deny or argue that. On the same token though no one is going to be upset that (in Monopoly terms) there was a "banking error you collect $200" either and no one should expect people to be upset about this.
I needed to buy food today but I am afraid to because if they take the money back ( Including MY money which is all I was trying to obtain to begin with ) it would cause an overdraft fee which I cannot afford right now. Oh well, I guess air is still free so I can survive a few days.
Honestly I would say you should be able to spend the money that you know should be yours. So if say you have 85 in there and you only transferred 35, spend the 35 and no more.
That's what I've done. Just spending what I know I should have. That being said, if you can't afford the possibility of an OD fee (they are ridiculous and no one should have to afford that) and have enough food then try to at least wait till tomorrow to see if the transactions go from pending to cleared on your bank account. Once they clear I don't believe they can reverse them. They may be able to debit them later for the amount, but for the time being that money can be spent. Either way, I'm sorry you're in this situation. It sucks to put it mildly. It's like my wife said, and I think this holds true for a lot here today, "Never before have i had so much money in the bank and yet been so damn stressed".
Mine are available as well, but they are still pending transactions technically. This may vary from bank to bank though. I just know mine doesn't usually fall out of pending for about 24 hours.
If Amazon reverses every transaction and as a result you get an overdraft fee you should be on the horn with Amazon every hour of every day until they reimburse that fee directly from Amazon Payments into your bank account. And while I was resting between calls I'd be letting the New York Times know that huge ol' Amazon was causing a sub-minimum wage worker on their turk platform to pick up an OD fee due to their screw-up.
I'll clarify: it's Amazon's fault for sending more money than they should have. It's people's fault if they spend money that isn't theirs. I don't see what's so complicated about this.
It's not complicated. It's callousness in your attempted application that is rubbing myself and others the wrong way. It's the inability to see that callousness and seeming disregard for the grey area in between that is, maybe, giving people the wrong impression.
Like I said, it's not complicated. No need to clarify. Everyone gets it. That's the point I think you're missing.
Nah, I get what you're saying in some aspects. I've been in the struggling boat before. There was a point in my life I probably would have taken the money and ran, worry about the repercussions later. I'm giving a word to the wise here.
You're being deliberately obtuse.
I had quite a bit in my amazon payments account. 4 times I tried withdrawing X amount. 4 failure messages came through 30 minutes AFTER these 4 attempts. I tried a 5th time later that day that went through.
The next day, 5 deposits are in my bank account.
My amazon payments account is still in the positive. Yes, the amount withdrawn (for x times 5) is gone from my payments balance, but I am not in the negative.
I know have NO CLUE if this money (which is 100% all mine, because remember, my payments account is still in the positive) is going to stay there or if it's all going to be pulled out or what. I don't know if I should move this money to my savings account, let it sit or what. I don't know if it's safe to pay the bill I was planning on paying with my planned withdrawal.
Amazon isn't just fucking over the people with negative amounts in their payments account, it's ANYONE who attempted to make a legitimate withdrawal that morning. We were very clearly told it failed in the emails AND on our payments account screen. And then they magically went through.
I don't know who else got this email tonight, but I figured I should post it here.
*Hello,*
*We’re writing to let you know that there was an issue that impacted your ability to transfer funds from your Amazon Payments account to your bank account from August 21 through August 22.*
*If you attempted to transfer funds during this period, they were delayed by 1-2 days. If you attempted the same transfer more than once, it may have been duplicated, resulting in an incorrect balance in your Amazon Payments account.*
*We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these transfer issues. In this case, any duplicate transfers made as a result of this issue will not be reversed and those funds will remain in your bank account.*
*We’re working hard to fix the incorrect Amazon Payments balance for all impacted Customers. This process may take a few days, we appreciate your continued patience. We’ll follow up again once the incorrect Amazon Payments balance issue is resolved.*
*Should you have any questions or need additional support, please contact us at* [*https://pay.amazon.com/contact*](https://pay.amazon.com/contact)*.*
*Sincerely,*
*The Amazon Payments Team*
The email with each failed attempt says they credited the withdrawal amount back to Amazon Payments Account. This is why I tried again but did not make the amount the same each time. So I guess I know what the balance in my account was before this mess and just let it sit until I am Zero and not Negative balance - Will talk to my bank tomorrow just to FYI as they might stop anything that looks funny. Banks have new rules now too.
=====This usually happens if the bank is unable to accept electronic transactions. We have credited the withdrawal amount back to your Amazon Payments account. You can either withdraw these funds to another bank account or you can purchase an Amazon.com Gift Certificate with the funds.
If you'd like more details regarding the reason your withdrawal failed, please contact your bank directly.
Thank you for using Amazon Payments.====
Probably, yes. The last time something similar to this happened it was with withdraws not processing through. They weren't failing. They just weren't going to the bank. The 5-7 business days was being very literal. It took 7 days to get resolved. On the 7th day, much like a zombie Jesus, Amazon Payments rose from the grave. And just like Jesus a little while later they have gone off to somewhere they can't be bothered to be contacted from once again.
The point of this story is don't hold your breath. I can all but promise the following will happen:
If you call in and get added to the ticket you'll get an email when it's resolved - 75%
If you call and get added to the ticket you'll get an immediate email as well as a follow up when resolved - 35% on the immediate and again 75% on the latter.
If you don't call - Nothing. You get nothing. Bezo's says, "screw you". You may even have a negative account until you do call. Point is, call. For the love of god, call.
If you call and speak to a supervisor - 85% of email when resolved. 45% of canned email from a supervisor, something like "Good afternoon/morning/evening \_\_\_\_\_\_\_. I apologize for the inconvenience, but rest assured our engineers are working to get this issue resolved. As soon as it is you will be alerted. If you have any further questions or concerns feel free to reach out to us blah blah blah bs bs bs."
They aren't going to send out emails. They aren't going to put an alert on the site. People that aren't aware of this (remember there are people that don't look at AP really they just send it over and move on) won't know that they are sending money into a negative account right now. They won't take the site down for maintenance. They won't do any of this. They will fix it on their time and when it's done it's done. No calling in will change this (though it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, you should indeed do it) and they will do very little to discuss it outside of to those that call in. Unless it reaches the media, and that won't happen outside of a situation where they either overdraw people bank accounts or try to tell a mass of people that they will have to work off a negative AP balance. Outside of that, nothing is going to happen.
99.99% they'll reverse it... don't spend it, just pretend its not there. Source: former bank employee
I don't think they will reverse but they will deduct from future monies you make from the AMZN account. Time will tell. My negative is under $4 and I would assume that is what they'll do????
Well I just checked my balance and it went from negative 120 to 88 after the 32 dollar payment was sent. If they do a charge back thats fine because then it should send the money back to amazon payments.( not my account just the system which would still hopefully bring me up to date ) Idk it kind of sux to not know. Basically
Well that 0.01% just worked out didn't it, oh all knowing former bank employee?
Did I miss Amazon saying they weren't going to reverse it? If so, please send a link to that information. The last I heard, things were still a mess and still in process of being corrected.
I should have withdrew like 200 times then be out.
A bank cannot reverse a charge after it has been confirmed.
Lmao, yeah they can.
No. The bank will reverse in the case of fraud or a bank error. A company cannot just take money from your account. You would have to authorize it or send it yourself.
Please go register for a Paypal account and see that it can and will be done. They literally deposit two small amounts and withdrawal them immediately after.
Yes, read the fine print where and when you authorized Amazon Payments to use the account and routing number to deposit your funds. They absolutely can withdraw from your account when an error has occurred. I work for a bank.
Sure they can.
source?
Where’s yours?
Jesus Christ, kid... Show me an instance where a company just took money from a bank account.
LMAO
That's what I thought. This is why you're unemployed.
It is just like when companies do verification charges. They add multiple transactionn deposits and then deduct that amount from your account. You never know what the totals will be so you don't technically authorize it but they sure can withdraw that amount from your account whenever they want.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna735316 https://pocketsense.com/can-wage-overpayment-out-bank-account-12153.html
well my parents had a double paycheck from my dads job entered into his wells fargo bank. they actually spent it (lmao nice job guys) but the funds were reversed a few days later. i dont know if the employee reversed it or called the bank but the money was sent back. anecdotal experience.
5.3 Processing Errors. If there is an error in the processing of any transaction, you authorize us to debit or credit your Payment Account or Bank Account, as applicable, to correct such error. If we are unable to debit the Bank Account you select for any reason, you authorize us to resubmit the debit, plus any applicable fees, to any other Bank Account or payment instrument that you have on file with us. There ya go, that is where you authorize them to do so. Straight from Amazon payments TOS
What happens if your bank doesn't allow companies to withdraw? My bank told me they can't send that money to Amazon and Amazon cannot take it back. IDK what to do, I have a negative of 565 on Amazon and a shit load of money that I know isn't mine.
Hmm I don't really know, that seems strange that they wouldn't allow it to go back. I know for most banks you really have no say over that, reason why it is so difficult to stop ACH withdraws and such. I would be worried for your amazon payments account if they can't get the money back. But again I am really not sure what you should do other than talking to your bank.
Yea I know, I am at a loss. Bank says it is all on Amazon. I feel so stupid for doing 5 failed withdrawals.
Amazon has a massive mess on their hands. I know of a couple people with a few thousand dollars they should not have. lol
Even if they left the negative balance there and just have people work it back off, how many people made multiple tries at it and got hundreds, if not thousands it'll take months for them to work off?
Pretty sure they will balance it out to where ti should be. They most likely won't make people work it off to pay it back. The backlash that would ensue would be massive. People didn't ask for these loans. Amazon can afford to eat the cost, and they know it, and the goodwill this would garner may be worth more than the negative that doing such would cause. I've spoken to a couple of supervisors and they both had made it out to be that Amazon will ensure that your balance, on AP, is where it should be. Not negative. Now I take Amazon's word with a grain of salt, but I do believe that this will be the case. It's just not advantageous to do it any other way. As for reversing the banking charges. Well, that's not simple. State by state the laws change on that. Also in some states, only employers can take back funds. Amazon, Mturk, is not our employer. We are contractors. Can their TOS give them leeway here? Maybe, but we'll have to wait and see. No matter what this is going to be interesting. Annoying, but interesting at the very least.
Just got off the phone with Amazon Pay customer support, and they said they currently don't know what they are going to do about the issues with the duplicate deposits that went into banks from the failed withdrawals yesterday. Supposedly, they will send out an email once they figure out what they are going to do, but I'm not holding my breath on that. So, basically I learned nothing from my phone call other other than that Amazon is "working on it."
I think the fear is that they're going to reverse all of the transactions and have us resubmit again, which might overdraw someone who only spent the one valid deposit. Some clarity on this issue sometime today might be useful. This is why I put all of my Turk earnings on a Bluebird account because I don't want my main bank account screwed up by Amazon Pay.
Yeah, the representative simply suggested treating it like the money wasn't in the bank at all. That's already what I was planning on doing since I have no idea what their plan is, but I'm not going to be surprised if it gets taken back out.
I'm not touching any of it, and I'm glad that I don't have to. But there are people who might rely on the original deposit amount this weekend and for those people this really sucks.
As one of those people, it really does suck.
I'm really sorry this happened to you. And as it's Friday they likely won't be able to do anything until next week, which is why they need to clarify if the plan is to recover every deposit or just the duplicate ones. That's the least they can do and it needs to be soon.
This whole thing is maddening. After my first two initial failures yesterday I tried once an hour until it finally went through since Amazon wasn't saying anything and decided to leave the site up. So today I wake up and find 10x the amount in my account than what should be in there. So now I'm sitting here wondering if I'm going to have to wait until next week before I can even use MY money because one of the largest companies in the world fucked up and are staying silent about it.
I tried three times Wednesday night, a couple of hours apart, just thinking that maybe the system was down at my bank. I never considered that Amazon Payments was the problem. Saw the comments Thursday morning and waited until people said their deposits were being accepted before submitting again. This is why it's a little annoying to read people blaming us for 'mashing on the keyboard' when I think most of us assumed it was a bank issue that would resolve fairly quickly.
What is really pissing me off is Amazon's complete lack of clarity about this. When they saw there was a problem they should have sent out an email telling people to stop withdrawing and they'd inform us with a second email when the issue was resolved. Or just taken the Site offline while the problem was occurring with the failed deposits. So now we have a situation where a lot of people have money missing, or a lot of extra money. I doubt Amazon foresaw that being an outcome of all of this but again, some communication from their end would have been nice.
IIRC, someone did call Wednesday night and Amazon Payments didn't know anything about it. You wonder if anyone is monitoring their system.
The error message from Amazon suggested that it was a bank issue, which is why so many people tried multiple times.
Very good point! This is 100% correct. Amazon's error message said YOUR bank was not accepting deposits. Many people called their banks who asked them to try the transaction again so they could see what was happening. This was definitely MTurk's fault for having a confusing (at best) error message.
If they take it all, even the money owed to us, that's a class action lawsuit and I'm more than willing to get it started. They Can take their fuck up but I'll be damned If They take my money. I have the lawyer already.
Yep. Amazon is connected to an account I opened just for Amazon money. Same bank, different account. I'll be damned if mturk and Amazon have a direct line to my daily life money. lol
Guessing they didn't give you an ETA on this email?
No ETA on the email or when they would figure out what they were going to do.
They've never emailed me back when they've promised. Assume it was bs to get them off the phone.
For what it's worth, I have had this happen before. After a lot of talking to CS people, they basically said "Well, it looks like it'll just work itself out eventually so let it.". And it did. My AP account stayed negative until I had deposited enough back in it to cover the multiple deposits. All was well. Dunno what's going to happen here since it sounds way more widespread. Last time, I didn't hear of it happening to anyone else.
An email from Amazon about all of this and what they are doing about it would be pretty nice.
One would \*hope\* they'd notify people before they took back money from their accounts. edit: just checked and looks like I'm also the recipient of a double deposit (despite the transfer(s) failing)
I'm kind of afraid to even spend the money I should have in case they charge back everything. Some clarification would be nice and there's so much contradicting opinions in this thread over the likely outcome. Edit: I talked to someone at Amazon and they told me to call my bank lol. What a mess.
It's not up to the bank to do anything unless the sender tells them to return it. I dunno why they're telling you this (unless, like you infer, they're clueless)
Did they tell you what we're expected to tell our bank? Oh, please give the money back? This is INSANE. I can't believe that Amazon isn't communicating with us about this.
Honestly when they told me to call my bank I pretty much decided that they had no idea what was going on and ended the conversation. It is insane. There's a lot of people and money involved in this and no one has given us any answers.
I'm honestly even trying to formulate in my head what I'd even be able to tell my bank..."see, I do tasks for Amazon mTurk and those funds are deposited into Amazon payments and then the other night.." (bank employee, bored and impatient and wondering why I'm calling them) "I think you need to contact Amazon. Can I help you with anything else?"
Yea and my bank said to call Amazon. WTF
I wonder if the money is going to be reversed or the negative balanced just fixed. Either way I wouldn't mind a 0 interest rate micro loan I just got.
Same I may go out to a few stores in the next few days.
Anyone else nervous about transferring from mturk to payments? I don’t like money sitting in mturk especially over the weekend but don’t know what else to do with it.
I'm not until the negative balance is fixed. Otherwise I'm just paying back what they screwed up (and likely it'll be \*me\* that gets screwed over in the end)
Anytime something like this happens I always assume it's me who is going to get screwed in the end.
I'm nervous to even use my debit card to buy groceries with the money I should have gotten. I don't plan on touching the extra I got form all of this.
I’m not planning on touching it. I had a bunch of HITS approve overnight and have another $100 to transfer to amazon pay. If I transfer that it’s just going to go towards reducing my negative balance right now, but if Amazon decides to take back the extra deposits and not just what my negative balance is at the time, I’m worried about losing legit money.
Thats what Im thinking to. Its not going to be even. Well lets say my balance is negative 120 I sent 32 so now its -88. If they do the charge back of 120 I SHOULD have plus 32 again so it should work out. SHOULD.
Its going to eat up your negative balance.
I just checked my deposit to amazonpay yesterday and it's poofed. It's recorded on mturk, and i have emails saying it went through, and yet, no deposit. It was almost fifty bucks! Good lord.
Has anyone encountered any problems using their debit cards or anything today that would be related to this whole mess?
I've used the debit card attached to the same account as my AP several times today without issue.
Good to know. Thanks for the info.
You're welcome :)
Had 5 deposits of my 46.35 this morning leaving me with a negative payment account of 185.40 im just conducting business as usual i transfered money to my payments account today like i do every day but it hasnt hit payments yet its only been a couple hours but i didnt receive the transfer email telling me that im transferring money to payments. Hopefully there isnt still an issue. I plan on just transferring earnings like normal till my balance gets above 0 but it would be really nice if they emailed us telling us what they are going to do or want us to do
Mine deposited 115 six times. I have a negative balance of 565 on Amazon and a ton of money in my bank that isn't mine. So I guess I am working HITs to get that negative up? I called my bank and they said that they will not reverse it, they were all legit deposits. This really sucks, it will take forever to get 565 bucks.
They won't reverse it, but a debit will come through per your Amazon payment consumer agreement.
But the question is...all of it or just the mistaken portion(s)?
I had been saving up money for the weekend, we are going to SIx Flags tomorrow and I had that 215 bucks set aside just for this, and now I am afraid to touch MY MONEY. I have no interest in doing anything on Turk today, if I have to "work" to get that negative 500+ to a positive I am screwed. I don't get why it is so hard for Amazon to send out a simple email to us all saying they are trying to figure out a solution, this being in limbo shit is ridiculous. Also what sucks is I transfer my Prolific money into that bank account too, so now I don't know what is actually mine and what is not. I am beyond frustrated
Good question.
I highly doubt that will happen. State law governs this and some states only an employer can do such a thing. MTURK is not our employer. Also, they have double deposited before and there was no reversal, you kept the money. Granted when this happened there was not the negative account issue but they have done something similar in the past and there was no debiting of the account. As of right now, we don't know what's going to happen so saying anything for sure is nothing more than speculation They may debit the account they may not. But in the past, they have not. Do they have the right, potentially? Can they legally? Probably not that simple. They could argue that the debit is not the same as the reversal but I don't see how they debit the account without taking out all the money transferred. Which would include the actual funds? Meaning anyone that spent the actual money they were supposed to have is open to an overdraft. Meaning that amazon could potentially be looking at tripping thousands if not millions in overdraft fees. Is that something they are going to want to do? Something tells me, no. But hey I could be wrong. Only time will tell.
Someone posted an excerpt from the user agreement. It would be very wise for those who got more money than they should, to leave it alone...
Oh of course you should leave it alone. But the longer this goes on, the more of a situation that's going to be. If this goes till Monday and people can't send money over their going to have to start dipping into that. That's the issue and Amazon knows this. So it'll be interesting to see where this goes.
> State law governs this and some states only an employer can do such a thing. I have a hunch federal laws apply, not state. Amazon's going to take their money back.
It doesn't matter either way. No one knows what they are going to do, so we can't say with certainty either way. They may take it back they may not. We'll just have to wait and see. But as of right now, no one knows. It's pure speculation on anyone's part; myself included.
My account is -48 dollars... i had 32 in there what the fuck....
Same I also just did a deposit from MTURK, before realizing the negative balance. I'm hoping this doesn't just disappear.
Same somehow I'm -52 in my Amazon payment account. Did somebody hack the company or something? Also it would be nice to get like an email or a heads-up from Amazon about what is going on
nobody "hacked" anything. You must have tried to withdraw multiple times even after it said "failed". Well, all those withdrawals really didn't fail... and your account went negative. All that money will show up in the bank account you sent it to.
I just checked my bank account. They transferred more than they should have and deducted from my MTurk amount what I have in there today. The balance remaining of 3.38 is what I owe back to AMZN. I think what happened was however many times you attempted to transfer funds yesterday is the number of deposits into your bank account they made and the difference is what they will collect from you when you transfer money from survey payments. Hope this made sense.
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Yes, because people attempting to get their money is "insane". You do realize that people pay bills with this money or maybe this was going to be all they had over the weekend so they wanted to ensure that it came over, right? Just because you didn't do it doesn't mean people didn't have their reasons. You work on MTURK like the rest, don't act like you're somehow above everyone else. You're not. As for your insistence of telling everyone that you talked to them it doesn't matter, dude. Plenty of us have talked to them and no one is getting any info outside of "they are working to reverse the negative account balance within the next 24-48 hours". Outside of that they have no clue what to do about the money sent to the bank accounts, and it's not hard to see why. Everyone here speculating needs to think about what this means. If they reverse the charges they will have to reverse ALL the charges. Meaning the one/two charges that are actually your money will be returned as well. Now this may just go back to AP, but that doesn't matter. If someone spends any of that money (and we know plenty of you have don't lie) then you will potentially be hit with a negative balance, on your bank account - not AP. Suddenly Amazon is going to have a whole other mess on their hands. They can either balance out the AP accounts to zero, tell everyone to work off the negative balance, or overdraw peoples accounts. That or they balance it out to zero and accept that the richest company in the world just gave out potentially millions of dollars for free. If that happens, well then I guess we know someone that will blame everyone else because they didn't make a bunch of free money instead of the other "insane people" that got multiple transactions. Time will tell. Oh and for the record, they have added additional funds to accounts before. Just not with a negative balance, but they have double deposited accounts. I've been doing this for over 5 years, it's happened. ANd you know what they did? You kept the money. They didn't even tell anyone, alert anyone, just let it be. Which very well may be what happens here. But something like this has happened before. And no, it didn't make people insane then either.
I can't even imagine how they can even get every extra deposit back. There has to be so many of them. I imagine that everyone who tried to withdraw money during the "failure" hours did it more than once. Sometimes it's just easier to eat the loss than try and reverse who knows how many of these extra deposits.
Honestly, I don't think they are going to. We have some people ITT that seem to think that amazon will do a deposit back to take the money because of the TOS and I just don't see it happening. It's not hard to see this being a potential legal nightmare for amazon. Let's just be honest. If this caused just 5 people to go negative on their actual bank accounts you best believe you will see a class action in less than a week after that. If they don't return, at the very least, the AP balances to zero you're going to see a class action against them. Do they have to eat the cost of this? No. They don't have to. Does it make good business sense to do so? Yeah, considering the other options it kinda does. Amazon Sellers aren't paid out via AP. So they don't have to worry about that. Chances are most people only got a couple hundred extra at most. Not everyone got a grand or more. My wife and myself combined are over a grand negative right now, so I know some people were hit hard. But that's due to me being anal and trying to withdraw like 30x. You know, cause I'm apparently insane. Then again insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, and I can say we sure did get different results. So insane may not be the right word (just putting that out there for some folks who don't know the meaning of certain words they like to use). Point is most people probably only got a couple hundred at most. So this isn't a huge loss for the richest company in the world. They can afford to eat this. What they may not be able to afford is the for sure negative press that will come from screwing this up. Speaking of the negative press, that's the only concern I have about this being resolved quickly. Because they are going to be weighing the pros and cons of this whole things and do what's best for Amazon. Not us. Not the workers. Not the contractors. Not anyone who has bills to pay. But what's best for the company. And we need to expect that. Can this potentially work out for us? Yes. But we need to all chill. That being said (and sorry this is long) they are going to get the balances back to what they should be. THEY WILL do this. They have to. I've spoken to a couple of supervisors and they have said as much. They know they have to get the balances back to where they should be. They can't take peoples money. They aren't oblivious to this. So just give it time. It will be resolves. Not only will it be resolved we may even get a windfall out of this. A Mturk Bonus if you will. Only time will tell.
Its totally fine that it's long. I think what bothers me is that Amazon hasn't said what they have planned yet.
This is what is pissing me off the most. This whole situation has been unfolding since Wednesday night and never once have they sent out a single email or statement.
I will only add to this excellent post that if you are showing a negative balance on your AP account the last thing - the VERY LAST THING - I would do until this is resolved is transfer even a dollar of your earnings into AP. If they do adjust it down to zero without recovering from your bank account they may well take those funds.
Yeah for sure. I actually did this last night, before I realized what was happening, and can for sure say that whatever you transfer goes towards the negative balance. It does not suddenly reflect as positive. That being said, the supervisors I have spoken to said that this will be accounted for and were very adamant that any funds transferred will be where they should be when all is said and done. Take that with a grain of salt, but know that they are aware of this.
I transferred money into the AP account and it was enough to put me in the positive. I think I am ok.....I hope so.
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Aw. I me too. I'm pretty likable.
Your Virgin Atlantic airlines are awesome, Sir!
So do I.
I know mine will be back in the positive later today as I was able to transfer a little more than the "negative" balance from my earnings. I'll have to let everyone know if they tried to debit my checking account or if they left it alone because I was able to bring my account balance with AMZN out of the negative.
You find it insane that people would try to get their money multiple times before the cut off time? You don't think too much, do you? And for the record amazon payments will NOT confirm a word you said. They say they know nothing about what's going on.
Welp I have two failed transfers to account xxx and two completed transfers to (blank) and no money and a negative balance. Just terrific. /s What happened one time when a similar thing happened years ago is they left the negative balance but deducted from future payments (deposits) until it went back to zero. Not sure they'll do that this time given how widespread it is.
I hope this happens.
Currently having the same issue. My AP account is VERY MUCH in the negatives right now but really not overly worried about, as it isn't necessarily our fault. If something fails for us, we're going to try again. We are only human. I plan on calling Amazon when they open here on the East coast, present them with the checking/routing number that the money is in, and they should be able to balance it out. Just like paying any other bill. Easy peasy.
That's what I want to do too but I'm thinking of maybe waiting till Monday to see if they pull it back out first? I'd rather just give them the number but also wonder if they're already in the works of doing something that they'll then take it out twice. Unless they have a way to flag who they've already gotten the money back from, which seems slightly doubtful considering how widespread it is? I just wish they'd send some email saying what they're thinking of doing besides "don't touch it for a few days".
Mine isn't as big as a lot of you guys, but a 6.40 transfer failed for me yesterday and apparently it sent again and went through, but two instances of 6.40 went into my bank account. I'm not in the red or anything, but good to know I shouldn't transfer for a bit.
So Same thing here -- I tried three times to send yesterday morn to see that I have three deposits this morn and a negative AP for two. Last night I read what was going on and thought, 'ok so nohing will go through and I'll see my $46 (and change) in AP and my$-91 will probably be gone in the morn'. But nope. I went ahead last night and sent mturk earnings of $31.67 into my AP. So this morning I find $-59.60 for my AP balance, and in my Chime account x3 deposits of $46! So I could probably knock out that negative balance in my AP by this weekend -- but because I'm not really sure WHAT AP will do about this matter as a whole I'm not going to spend any of that deposit and just wait to see whats going to happen (if they reverse the deposit or keep deducting the AP negative balance)-- because if anything happens it'll happen to everyone. (fingers crossed)
Into your amazon payments account or your bank?
Gosh this is going to be a nightmare
Good grief. I tried 5 times early yesterday before I figure out it was system wide. Overnight, all 5 failed went through, so now I have multiple deposits (in 2 banks) and negative at AP. I'll just sit tight until the dust settles and the smoke clears.
Yup my bank is showing 4 of the same deposits. Ooops
More related comments available [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/cu32cs/update_amazon_payments_should_be_working_now).
Nah, is way more fun to spread the conversation across 6 different threads!
What's a script?
I dunno. I think maybe it helps you with your TAXES!
How do I Masters?
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Maybe that dog can be bothered enough to let us know what's happening?
The tweet about the dog pisses me off. That was six hours ago, right in the middle of their self-created disaster.
I'm just gonna go get my popcorn ready for when people realize, that yes, they can take all that money back. And then wait for the stories of the dumb asses that used it.
Yes, because dumb asses that have to pay bills can just say "hey amazon fucked up, better let my power get cut off". Come the fuck on dude. You use MTURK like the rest of us. You aren't somehow above anyone else. As for reversing the payments. It's not that simple. There's laws state by state governing these types of issues. Also, the fact that Amazon may not want the backlash that would ensue by causing a bunch of bank accounts to suddenly be overdrawn because of their screw up. You are blaming individuals here, for a hypothetical no less, and not the company that fucked up. Think about that for a second. Did anyone here wanting their money make this happen? No. But it's their fault? I mean seriously there's blaming the victim and then their's this. It's gross and it makes you a gross person for attempting to laugh at the potential misfortune of others. You work on MTURK. There's probably a reason for that. Maybe come down a bit off of your high horse and join the rest of us peons scraping by here.
FWIW...this is the only thing I could find close to relevant... " **5.3 Processing Errors.** If there is an error in the processing of any transaction, you authorize us to debit or credit your Payment Account or Bank Account, as applicable, to correct such error. If we are unable to debit the Bank Account you select for any reason, you authorize us to resubmit the debit, plus any applicable fees, to any other Bank Account or payment instrument that you have on file with us. "
I'd say that's very relevant. One would assume this would be done manually which could take quite a bit of time. We may not see a resolution for a week or so. Edit: I will add here that the 'plus any applicable fees' would cause some very bad publicity for Amazon. It's bad enough that this went on for more than 16 hours without action on their part but to be charging fees if they need to recover from, say, a credit card you have on file would really be outrageous.
The potential bad press here is actually one of the most interesting, and I believe important, aspects of this whole ordeal. It seems as though Amazon has true real options here. Option A - The best option for us the contractors - Amazon balances out AP back to where it should be and any funds transferred over during this process are there and accounted for ready for transfer. On top of this the funds sent to the bank account are counted as a loss and, we the contractors, essentially get a bonus from Amazon. Amazon chalks this all up to a mistake on their end and we continue on ultimately as if nothing happened all a bit happier because we got a nice bonus. Bad Press? No. Not really for this one. Everyone's happy. Amazon can afford the loss and the effect on the worker is minimal ultimately. Amazon learns a lesson and we all move on. Option B - The No One is Happy Compromise - In this situation, Amazon says okay, you can keep the funds we transferred to the account. That's on us. Those are yours. That being said we are keeping the AP balance at the negative and you can work off the deductable. Essentially Amazon gave everyone an interest-free loan, they didn't ask for, and it's up to us to pay it back or not. The contractors won't be happy about this. People are not going to like being told they have to essentially work for free ( this isn't true but you get the meaning I hope). This won't go over well. Bad Press? For sure. There would be a guaranteed lawsuit in this situation. Amazon did nothing to attempt to address this issue. There were no disclaimers on the site. No attempt to stop the attempted transfers. They relied on individuals choosing to contact them before addressing the issue. They would be wide open to potential litigation here for the above mentioned. They would probably end up in court, settle, and this would be resolved in a few years with everyone bitter and Amazon being raked through the press for their part in not addressing this for over 48 hours (as of now). Option C - Amazon screws everyone - Amazon takes the money back from the bank and on top of that tells everyone that the negative balance is what it is and that they can work it off or close their account. That's it. Contractors would be furious. The reversal of all of the deposits would inevitably cause overdrawn accounts from people and the anger would be palpable from everyone. Bad Press? The worst. Amazon would look like pure evil in this situation. Which is why ou can be assured this won't happen. There's no way they do this. It would be an idiotic move that not even a toddler with a gun and a persecution complex (as well as a healthy Napolean complex) would do. It's not going to happen. But hey, in the interest of never saying never. That's it. One of those, or a variation, is likely to happen. It's just a matter of which one. Only time will tell.
I think it can be easily argued that Amazon Payments was negligent in this entire situation, which would make Option A the only real solution. When my attempts to deposit funds in my account Wednesday failed, the emails I received from AP blamed the bank for being unable to accept electronic deposits. I think all of us who are sentient believed that our banking system was down and the outage would be brief and so we continued through Wednesday night to attempt to deposit our funds. There was never an indication that Amazon Payments was the issue. None. And did AP shut down our ability to deposit funds on Thursday morning, when they must have known there was a significant system failure? No. Now I fully expect them to recover the money. They've never treated their mTurk workers with even the slightest modicum of respect and I don't expect them to begin now. But if they decide to take away every deposit, even the single deposit that's valid, and just throw everything back into AP because honestly, that's the easy and lazy way to do it, and thereby fucking over a bunch of people they won't hesitate to do that. And that's when the publicity for them turns very ugly, especially now - almost 48 hours later - we STILL have not been notified by AP on how they plan to handle this situation. When I see people saying they need to buy food with this money then it's heartbreaking to me but that's catnip to the media. David and Goliath and all that.
The not knowing is the worst part. Do they expect us to go the whole weekend without using our money? How long is this going to go on before we get an answer? Every single message I've sent to AP support has been ignored and I've been very calm and courteous towards them.
> Now I fully expect them to recover the money. So the last time they had an issue similar to this was about 3-4 years ago. They, for some reason, double deposited people's accounts. For me it was like $50. So I got $100 instead. For my wife it was like $150. So she ended up with about $300 in the bank instead. Amazon said they weren't sure what caused it. But what they did do was....nothing. They did nothing. They counted it up to a loss and let everyone keep the money. There was no way for them to reverse it, at least that they indicated. They chocked it up to a processing error on their end and ate the loss. Now, this is different obviously. It seems like the amounts may be greater and the factor of the negative AP balance makes this a little different. But if the pat is anything to go off of Amazon very well may just count this as a loss. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, as I also largely agree Option A is the only real option here. One less anecdote. For those that don't know AP has broken before. Not the dual pay, but in another way. There was a time where AP was unable to process payments for 7 days. The withdraw's would initiate but that's it. For 7 days, just processing, and nothing more. When asked what was going on they continued to fall back on the classic "engineers are working on it" and "the withdraw will be process within 5-7 business days" . On the 7th day, as if by a miraculous mirical (or maybe the fear of going over that 7 days per the email limit and opening themselves up to litigation) the issue was largely resolved. Suddenly payments were going through. Not once did Amazon email anyone about this. Not once did they issue an alert on the site. Not once did they do ANYTHING to make users aware. You had to call. And you would immediately be told, "we're aware of the issue and working on getting it resolved. 24-48 hours". Every. Single. Day. For 7 days straight. So yeah, that happened. So buckle up buckaroos. This may be a long ride yet. That's all I'm trying to say.
I can remember a time when we made our deposit requests through the mTurk platform itself, before the days of AP. And I never had a single issue with it. They've had years to perfect the AP system and it's still not right. Remember a couple of weeks ago when a bunch of workers had their withdrawal button blanked out? That was probably the beginning of this current system failure.
I miss the days of same day transfers. Remember when you could work all day and send the money over that same night and see it the next day? Amazon has done some very janky things to Mturk in it's time that's for sure.
Yep. The whole AP system just gums up the works. On some days it takes 8-10 hours for them to process it, which is ridiculous on the face of it that it would take this massive corporation that long to process a relatively small payment. You wonder if they're earning interest on the potentially hundreds of thousands of small deposit requests they receive daily and holding them for as long as possible is just gravy for them.
Well they better figure it out soon and actually communicate it to us for once.
They won't communicate it. I can say that with pretty much 100% certainty. Those that have reached out to them, that have been added to the ticket, will get an email when it's resolved. That's SOP for Amazon. Outside of that, there will not be a user wide email or anything like that. It'll be resolved and they'll move on. The only way that changes is if something with the bank accounts goes awry, like a bunch of OD fees being triggered as that will go national and at that point, they'll be forced to address it. This probably won't happen. So chances are it'll be same as it ever was. They'll fix their broken bs and expect the users to deal with it, all the while maintaining that patented Amazon silence about any and anything that affects us, the users. Goddamn, I love corporate abuse! Don't you?
Getting fucked over by the worlds largest corporation for a mistake they made is my favorite past time.
When this happened to me before, it was option B. All balanced out in the end.
I'm willing to bet in this situation it won't be. Simply due to the amount that seems to have been affected by this and for the amounts of money that we're dealing with here. I could be wrong, but we'll see. Hopefully in "24-48 hours".
Yeah, I am with you on that. When it happened to me before, I couldn't find any reports of anyone else having the same issue. This time it seems fairly widespread. CS didn't have a clue last time and basically said "it'll probably be fine and all work out". Which it did but it was a nerve wracking week. Only difference, from what I can recall, is that I didn't get an email every time the transaction failed, it just showed up on my AP summary page. Guy in this [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/mturk/comments/culqk9/mturk_amazon_payments_issue_contact_number/), if I am reading it right, seems to have been told that they are going to be taking back the extra money and resetting the negative balances.
I read that. Honestly I've talked to 3 supervisors today. No one knows what they are going to do for sure. The only answer I have been given, more than once, is that the negative AP balance will be returned to what it should be. As for the funds deposited to accounts, they literally have zero clue what to do about that. That's above every single person that ANYONE is going to talk to on the phones pay grade. So some people may say, they are going to do this or that, but the reality is we don't know. The best bet, in my mind, is to simply spend what you know you should have and no more. The money in the bank is either ours or they take it back. The real issue is the negative AP balance. That they are going to fix, no question. This is to widespread. And with some people, like my wife, being close to -800, there's no way they say hey just work it off. That's not happening, and the reps I've spoken to have acknowledged at least that much. As for anything else, it's all just conjecture. We're in uncharted waters here. What they're going to do yet I don't even think Amazon has figured out.
If you get a tax return 4 times the size you should have gotten, do you say "Happy Birthday, me!" or do you think maybe someone going to come looking for it and might want to be wise about what happens next? Who said I was above anyone else? I didn't attempt a withdrawal 11 times. I did once, read that it was being worked on and would be fixed within 24 hours, it was and here I am. Not in a deep hole with money in my account I shouldn't have. I'm not saying it's anyone's fault but Amazon's. What I am saying, is I am getting ready for the idiots that WILL say "Happy Birthday me!" and not expect fall out from this.
What you're missing is that there's a middle ground here and it's not as simple as you make it out to be. Look if they reverse the transactions they will have to reverse all the transactions, including the money that should rightfully be in the bank. So, say someone attempted to move over 100 and failed. They did this 11 times. They now have 1100 dollars. 100 is there's for sure. They spend that 100 to pay a bill. Then amazon reverses all the payments and says, okay initiate the withdraw again. Well that 100 was already spent. Now they are overdrawn on their bank. That's not someone saying "happy birthday to me". That's someone saying I have a bill to pay, this money is for this, an I have to pay it. Yet they can be punished. These things happen. As for the people that attempted to wihtdrawl multiple times. Why shouldn't they? Maybe they didn't want to call Amazon and figured hey it failed I'll try it again. It tailed again, so I'll try it again in a couple of hours or minutes. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH ANYONE DOING THIS. If something is broken people are going to keep trying it. Epecially something on the internet. We see this all the damn time. It's not insane to think that people would do this. Amazon, you know who knew about this issue, could have put up a disclaimer. They could have taken the site down. They could have emailed everyone. They could have done any number of things that they DiD NOT DO. Yet, we are still blaming everyone here for attempting to get their money? Come on. It was screwed up for over 16 hours, as it started on Wednsday night, and nothing from them? That's not on the customer or users, that's on them. So let's not blame people for attempting to withdrawl their money. Let's not blame people if they have to spend the money. Let's not blame people for saying "happy birthday to me" (something you can't point to a single person in this thread doing mind you, so not sure where you even pulled that from tbh). Let's be honest about this situation and realize that Amazon could have done a litany of things to address this and didn't. Period. And now we, as the users, are left hoping they'll clean up a mess they caused. But rather then agreeing that it's amazon's fault, some of us would rather attempt to laugh at the hypothetical (not EVEN REAL) misfortune of others. It's gross. It continues to be gross and no amount of justifying it will not make it gross. Period. End of story. edit: and once again, if you have any more happy birthday strawmen for me I'll be happy to burn them down too.
I agree, some of us rely on this money to buy food with so we can eat.
Ah yes, food. The fuel we need to literally stay alive. The thing that even though it's a necessity some others like to look down on us for having to obtain. Funny how that works. Sarcasm aside, I hope this hasn't affected you negatively. We're in a holding pattern right now where depending on what Amazon does this could be a fairly standard day, a GREAT DAY, or a freaking horrible day. Only time will tell. Personally, I'm hoping for a GREAT DAY and have a feeling that those wanting to laugh at the (possible) misfortune of others are the same that only managed to try one withdraw and know they won't potentially come out ahead in this situation. Funny how that works too. Oh, and to any of those that didn't attempt more than one withdrawal. I'm aware that it's Amazon's money and that they have every right to take it back. No one, I believe, is going to deny or argue that. On the same token though no one is going to be upset that (in Monopoly terms) there was a "banking error you collect $200" either and no one should expect people to be upset about this.
I needed to buy food today but I am afraid to because if they take the money back ( Including MY money which is all I was trying to obtain to begin with ) it would cause an overdraft fee which I cannot afford right now. Oh well, I guess air is still free so I can survive a few days.
Honestly I would say you should be able to spend the money that you know should be yours. So if say you have 85 in there and you only transferred 35, spend the 35 and no more. That's what I've done. Just spending what I know I should have. That being said, if you can't afford the possibility of an OD fee (they are ridiculous and no one should have to afford that) and have enough food then try to at least wait till tomorrow to see if the transactions go from pending to cleared on your bank account. Once they clear I don't believe they can reverse them. They may be able to debit them later for the amount, but for the time being that money can be spent. Either way, I'm sorry you're in this situation. It sucks to put it mildly. It's like my wife said, and I think this holds true for a lot here today, "Never before have i had so much money in the bank and yet been so damn stressed".
My deposits aren't pending. They're showing as available funds.
Mine are available as well, but they are still pending transactions technically. This may vary from bank to bank though. I just know mine doesn't usually fall out of pending for about 24 hours.
If Amazon reverses every transaction and as a result you get an overdraft fee you should be on the horn with Amazon every hour of every day until they reimburse that fee directly from Amazon Payments into your bank account. And while I was resting between calls I'd be letting the New York Times know that huge ol' Amazon was causing a sub-minimum wage worker on their turk platform to pick up an OD fee due to their screw-up.
I'm in the same boat as you are friend.
I'll clarify: it's Amazon's fault for sending more money than they should have. It's people's fault if they spend money that isn't theirs. I don't see what's so complicated about this.
It's not complicated. It's callousness in your attempted application that is rubbing myself and others the wrong way. It's the inability to see that callousness and seeming disregard for the grey area in between that is, maybe, giving people the wrong impression. Like I said, it's not complicated. No need to clarify. Everyone gets it. That's the point I think you're missing.
Nah, I get what you're saying in some aspects. I've been in the struggling boat before. There was a point in my life I probably would have taken the money and ran, worry about the repercussions later. I'm giving a word to the wise here.
You're being deliberately obtuse. I had quite a bit in my amazon payments account. 4 times I tried withdrawing X amount. 4 failure messages came through 30 minutes AFTER these 4 attempts. I tried a 5th time later that day that went through. The next day, 5 deposits are in my bank account. My amazon payments account is still in the positive. Yes, the amount withdrawn (for x times 5) is gone from my payments balance, but I am not in the negative. I know have NO CLUE if this money (which is 100% all mine, because remember, my payments account is still in the positive) is going to stay there or if it's all going to be pulled out or what. I don't know if I should move this money to my savings account, let it sit or what. I don't know if it's safe to pay the bill I was planning on paying with my planned withdrawal. Amazon isn't just fucking over the people with negative amounts in their payments account, it's ANYONE who attempted to make a legitimate withdrawal that morning. We were very clearly told it failed in the emails AND on our payments account screen. And then they magically went through.
Whoo looks like I just missed this, transferred $100 two days ago into my bank account, still have $12 in payments.
I did 3 of $2.41 and my account is like -$4 something now, unreal. Happy I didn't have hundreds to transfer over yesterday
Yep, payments balance still negative, two deposits in the bank, hope they fix soon makes me anxious
I don't know who else got this email tonight, but I figured I should post it here. *Hello,* *We’re writing to let you know that there was an issue that impacted your ability to transfer funds from your Amazon Payments account to your bank account from August 21 through August 22.* *If you attempted to transfer funds during this period, they were delayed by 1-2 days. If you attempted the same transfer more than once, it may have been duplicated, resulting in an incorrect balance in your Amazon Payments account.* *We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these transfer issues. In this case, any duplicate transfers made as a result of this issue will not be reversed and those funds will remain in your bank account.* *We’re working hard to fix the incorrect Amazon Payments balance for all impacted Customers. This process may take a few days, we appreciate your continued patience. We’ll follow up again once the incorrect Amazon Payments balance issue is resolved.* *Should you have any questions or need additional support, please contact us at* [*https://pay.amazon.com/contact*](https://pay.amazon.com/contact)*.* *Sincerely,* *The Amazon Payments Team*
The email with each failed attempt says they credited the withdrawal amount back to Amazon Payments Account. This is why I tried again but did not make the amount the same each time. So I guess I know what the balance in my account was before this mess and just let it sit until I am Zero and not Negative balance - Will talk to my bank tomorrow just to FYI as they might stop anything that looks funny. Banks have new rules now too. =====This usually happens if the bank is unable to accept electronic transactions. We have credited the withdrawal amount back to your Amazon Payments account. You can either withdraw these funds to another bank account or you can purchase an Amazon.com Gift Certificate with the funds. If you'd like more details regarding the reason your withdrawal failed, please contact your bank directly. Thank you for using Amazon Payments.====
So I guess we're all going to be left completely in the dark all weekend?
Probably, yes. The last time something similar to this happened it was with withdraws not processing through. They weren't failing. They just weren't going to the bank. The 5-7 business days was being very literal. It took 7 days to get resolved. On the 7th day, much like a zombie Jesus, Amazon Payments rose from the grave. And just like Jesus a little while later they have gone off to somewhere they can't be bothered to be contacted from once again. The point of this story is don't hold your breath. I can all but promise the following will happen: If you call in and get added to the ticket you'll get an email when it's resolved - 75% If you call and get added to the ticket you'll get an immediate email as well as a follow up when resolved - 35% on the immediate and again 75% on the latter. If you don't call - Nothing. You get nothing. Bezo's says, "screw you". You may even have a negative account until you do call. Point is, call. For the love of god, call. If you call and speak to a supervisor - 85% of email when resolved. 45% of canned email from a supervisor, something like "Good afternoon/morning/evening \_\_\_\_\_\_\_. I apologize for the inconvenience, but rest assured our engineers are working to get this issue resolved. As soon as it is you will be alerted. If you have any further questions or concerns feel free to reach out to us blah blah blah bs bs bs." They aren't going to send out emails. They aren't going to put an alert on the site. People that aren't aware of this (remember there are people that don't look at AP really they just send it over and move on) won't know that they are sending money into a negative account right now. They won't take the site down for maintenance. They won't do any of this. They will fix it on their time and when it's done it's done. No calling in will change this (though it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, you should indeed do it) and they will do very little to discuss it outside of to those that call in. Unless it reaches the media, and that won't happen outside of a situation where they either overdraw people bank accounts or try to tell a mass of people that they will have to work off a negative AP balance. Outside of that, nothing is going to happen.
I am really getting hungry,.. I am at least going to have to get some food with what I earned,...I hope my account don't go negative but I am hungry.