This was never supposed to be a saga. All I wanted to do was update my bank details so I could be paid the royalties I’d already earned from books sold on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform.
Instead, that simple request detonated into one of the most sustained displays of corporate incompetence I’ve seen in decades. And I’ve seen plenty.
What follows is not just a personal diary of frustration. It’s a catalogue — a dossier — of how the world’s biggest online retailer systematically fails its own authors, hides behind process, and mistakes theatre for service.
The opening act: when “customer-centric” collapsed
It began with a routine system prompt: “Your bank details are incorrect. Please update them.”
Obediently, I tried. That’s when I hit Amazon’s two-step verification wall — an impenetrable block that locked me out from making the changes their own system demanded.
I chronicled the absurdity in Astounding customer service failure. It set the tone for everything that followed: scripted apologies, circular referrals, and no actual resolution.
Handballing without ownership
My next stop was support. Surely, I thought, a human could resolve what a machine could not.
Instead, I was passed back and forth like a defective parcel. Retail support insisted it was KDP’s problem. KDP support insisted it was Retail’s. Each assured me the other had the power to fix it. Neither did.
The loop was endless, and ownership was absent. I documented it in Amazon’s failure of ownership. It wasn’t just poor service. It was cultural. Amazon staff seemed forbidden from exercising judgment or responsibility.
AI knows you’re angry — but no one cares
Here’s the irony: Amazon sells AWS Comprehend, a tool designed to parse sentiment in text. It can detect frustration, anger, escalation risk. If they’re running it over my emails — and it would be negligence if they weren’t — their dashboards must be glowing crimson.
Sentiment: furious. Escalation risk: high. Resolution: zero.
The AI knew. The culture didn’t care. I spelled this out in When AI knows you’re angry.
Kafka in a call centre
As if the loop wasn’t enough, escalation itself became a violation.
When I copied multiple Amazon addresses into my emails — addresses suggested by Amazon staff themselves — the system spat out an auto-generated reprimand: “You copied an email address not associated with your account.”
At one point, their support inbox literally bounced my messages back, unable to accept mail. Kafka would have blushed. Monty Python would have laughed. I captured it in Kafka in a call centre.
Royalties withheld: the unconscionable core
By now, the human cost was mounting. Days without sleep. Stress amplified by PTSD and autism. Hours wasted re-supplying evidence I’d already provided.
And all the while, Amazon continued to collect money from the sale of my books — while I remained locked out of my account, unable to access the royalties I had already earned.
This was no longer just incompetence. It was unconscionable. That became the theme of Amazon is blocking me from accessing royalties I’ve already earned.
The pièce de résistance: “Start a new account”
Just when I thought the absurdity had peaked, Amazon’s latest response arrived. Their “most efficient path forward”?
Create an entirely new KDP account, and trust them to migrate my books and royalties across.
That’s not a solution. That’s abdication. Imagine your bank telling you: “We can’t unlock your account. Just open a new one and we’ll see if we can move your salary across.” Regulators would laugh them out of the room. Yet Amazon presents it as best practice.
I laid it bare in Amazon tells locked-out author to start over with a new KDP account.
Why this matters beyond me
I’m just one author. But this isn’t just my story. This is a case study in how Big Tech treats creators:
- Broken systems that lock people out.
- Staff bound to scripts, not solutions.
- AI dashboards that measure anger but empower no one to act.
- Money withheld while blame is shuffled between silos.
- “Fixes” that push the burden back onto the customer.
Amazon calls itself “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” My experience shows otherwise. It’s Earth’s most process-centric company — where the metrics look tidy, the dashboards glow, but the human beings who create the value are left stranded.
The series so far
Here’s the full chronology of this fiasco to date:
- Astounding customer service failure — where it all began.
- Amazon’s failure of ownership — endless hand-offs, no accountability.
- When AI knows you’re angry — the AI reads frustration, but culture refuses to act.
- Kafka in a call centre — escalation itself treated as a violation.
- Amazon is blocking me from accessing royalties I’ve already earned — the unconscionable reality of withheld income.
- Amazon tells locked-out author to start over with a new KDP account — the ultimate insult dressed up as efficiency.
Final thought
This is bigger than one locked account. It’s a parable of what happens when a company grows so vast, so enamoured of its own metrics, that it forgets the basic principle of service: ownership.
Books sell. Amazon gets paid. Authors don’t.
Call it what you like. I call it unconscionable.
