Over the past few weeks, I have switched web hosting providers (I had been with the same vendor for 10 years), stopped using Amazon Prime, Kindle unlimited, Freetime unlimited, Amazon Music, and all other Amazon.com purchases (though my prime membership is still active, so I won’t stop my kids from watching free prime videos yet), and I nearly gave up on American Express. I am at that point in my life where a vendor that does something to piss me off will just lose my business. If my business is not worth it to them, then I am not willing to stick around and be abused.
The situation with my hosting provider (Ionos/1&1) was caused by an important portion of one of my websites (the admin folder) disappearing from the server due to something their support personnel did. When I discovered the issue, I learned that they did not have backups of any of my site data, and they stated (which I confirmed through escalation) that there was nothing they could do to get my data back. Additionally, they could not get my sites backed up without me moving everything to a new account. So, I did…but with a different vendor (HostGator).
The issue with Amazon was that someone, who wasn’t me, opened a business account on Amazon and started making purchases with a credit card number of mine that had previously been stolen. When I notified them of the issue, they claimed there was nothing they could do, since I could not provide them any information about the account that was using my AmEx number fraudulently (since it wasn’t my account, I knew neither the name nor address used). Amazon has continued allowing someone, who still isn’t me, to make multiple other charges on that same credit card number.
American Express nearly lost me as a customer over the same incident. I contacted them after seeing the fraudulent charges coming from Amazon, and they assured me the charges would not be posted to my account and that the old card number would be completely deactivated. Unfortunately, charges continued to pile up from Amazon, and one of them did actually post and appear on my latest bill. After spending an hour on the phone with them today, they admitted that the previous case had not been entered correctly, but they assured me that the problem is now solved. I will reserve judgement for another week or two.