How To Delete Or Close An Amazon Account

There are many potential reasons why a user may decide to permanently delete their Amazon account – or, as Amazon puts it – to “close” their account. Since Amazon does not provide services to the entire Globe, a user may feel reluctant to do business with a company if they can no longer provide services to that user. Some former Amazon users are even known to shut down their accounts in protest against controversial Amazon business practices or policies.

It is also possible to state that if one is not actively using this type of services, it may be better to close this type of account, since it necessarily contains a lot of sensitive information. Well, if you’re not really using it, there’s no reason for this sensitive information to be available, even though it’s guaranteed to be safe by a huge company like Amazon.

Whatever the reason a user may want to close their Amazon account or want to know how to reinstate your Amazon account, it is imperative that they understand exactly what this means before proceeding.

What does closing your account do?

The “tl; dr” version is – once you “close” your account, all information in it is gone for good. This information would not be accessible by you or by anyone, including Amazon technical support personnel. The process is very ongoing, and at the time of writing, it is not possible to restore closed accounts.

Here’s a more detailed list of what happens when you close your Amazon account:

1. You will lose access to other sites that have used or required an AmazonThis includes, but is not limited to Author Central, Kindle Direct Publishing, etc.
2. You will lose access to platforms and digital content related to AmazonMusic, Amazon Drive and/or Prime Photos, as well as your Amazon Appstore purchases. This includes, but is not limited to, Amazon Prime videos and Kindle purchases. All this content will be deleted and made unrecoverable.
3. All comments, chat messages, and customer images you posted or received will be lost.
4. You will lose all of your account history, including your credit card information, order history, etc.
5. NOTE: This is the only way to clear your Amazon purchase history.
6. Unprocessed returns or refunds will be forfeited.
7. Any remaining Amazon.com gift card or promotional credit balances associated with your account will also be problematic.

How do I close/delete my Amazon account?

Given that Amazon provides many and varied paid services, and the decision to close an account has permanent irreversible consequences, it goes without saying that the process required to do so is a bit more complicated than most. While not exactly Byzantine, it does require users to take some action. Follow the quick and easy guide if you are absolutely sure you want to close your account:

1. Go to Amazon.com.
2. Log in to the account you want to delete.
3. Once you have logged into your account, make sure that no pending orders are currently active on your account. Keep in mind that you will not be able to close your account until all of these orders have been completed.
4. At this point, informed users will have already noticed that there is no “Cancel / Remove Account”button on the site. This is the reason why you should scroll down to the bottom of the page and go to the “Let us help you” section, then click “Help”.
5. Go to “Browse Help Topics”and choose “Need More Help?” at the bottom of the left column. Then choose “Contact us”.
6. In the section “How can we help you?” choose “Something else”.
7. On “Please make a selection”and choose “Login and security”.
8. The second time, you will be asked to “make a selection”;it is in fact the first time that you will even be able to choose “Close my account”.
9. Go to the section “How would you like to contact us?” section and select your preferred contact option – this can be by email, phone or chat. You may have to wait a while until a member of the support staff contacts you through the medium of your choice – but generally it shouldn’t take too long.
10. The staff member you come into contact with will then establish without a doubt that closing your account is, in fact, what you want to do and then proceed manually.