Kickstarter Amazon Trouble [Resolved]

[SerenaRaeyld]

I hope this is the right place for this, but...

I awoke this morning to excitedly learn of the Kickstarter Pledge Drive to reprint War and XP, and dashed immediately to the GiantITP page, quickly calculating how much I could get away with pledging without my spouse/parent/financial advisor slapping me. :smallsmile:

I decided which would be my first pledge reward, an option that had only one of its limited fifteen left available. Yes!

Quickly signed up for Kickstarter.

Hit the "Go to Amazon" button.

Signed into my Amazon account for payment, practically drooling over the keyboard at this point--

--only to run smack into the brickwall of "This functionality has been disabled for your account. Please contact-us to know more."

What?!

I backed up - maybe there's another way to pay? PayPal? Directly with Visa? Nothing.

Roused my husband from slumber with a frantic "Quickly, you have to sign into your Amazon account for me! Something's wrong with mine, and it's important, and I'll explain later, just sign in, now now NOW!"

One abused spouse later, we signed in with his account. Finally! Now we can order that--- "This functionality has been disabled for your account. Please contact-us to know more."

...

I checked around my Amazon Payment account settings, and found an option to "Add additional capabilities to your Personal Account." Clicked that and.......Yup, "This functionality has been disabled for your account. Please contact-us to know more."

Growing desperate, I conducted a quick search for the phase and "Amazon Payments." The occasional person here and there seemed to have the same problem, but no one ever posted with a resolution, or even replied to say they'd found a way to resolve it.

We've each had our accounts for 7+ years; we've each been Prime Members for 4+ of those. We make at least a dozen purchases each through Amazon, on a slow year.

I am at a complete loss as to why I cannot throw my money at Rich Burlew when he's finally given us the opportunity to do just that, when apparently most the rest of the internet world is able to do so at will.

I've sent an email to Amazon's customer support about the issue (their customer service phone lines won't open until Monday), but I have no idea when I'll hear back from them. I'll of course call the moment the lines open Monday morning, but I imagine a lot of the limited opportunities will be gone by then.

Any ideas? Tips, tricks, arcane rituals?

Thanks.

Edit: Just to add, we're both attempting to make our payments from California, with my account created while living in California, and his in Pennsylvania. Shouldn't be a non-US issue.

[Douglas]

I found one comment that creating a new Amazon account worked. You could try that.

[SerenaRaeyld]

I found one comment that creating a new Amazon account worked. You could try that.

Tried and succeeded. :smallsmile:

Still strange I can't use my standard account, but at least the pledge was made. If I hear back from Amazon, I'll update with what they share.

Thanks!

[Douglas]

Considering this is functionality that is on by default for new accounts, my best guess is that they think for some unknown reason that your main account might possibly be compromised. Someone with the password to your main account could use that to steal a lot of money from any credit cards or other payment methods you have on file with Amazon without having to know anything more, and a Kickstarter project would be an easy way to do it. Someone setting up a new account would have to acquire your credit card information separately in order to use it, and if a thief has that much information then no reasonable level of disabled functionality anywhere but the credit card company will stop him.

[kean]

I had the same problem with Kickstarter and Amazon payments. Amazon support said it was because my account was only set up for receiving payments for work done with Mechanical Turk. That was a long time ago!

The recommend setting up a new Amazon Payment account under a different email address, or closing the old Amazon Payment account and creating a new one with the same email.

HTH the next person,
Kean

[Hbgplayer]

I would suggest that contacting Amazon would be the best route. I live in CA too, and it worked fine for me. Perhaps you have a setting that blocks purchases over a certain amount?

[Renegade Paladin]

My account worked fine for it, and I've had it for years.

[The Giant]

Since this has been resolved I'm locking to avoid spiraling into spam.