AN AMAZON customer has claimed the tech giant locked him out of his smart home devices after a delivery driver falsely accused him of saying a racist remark.
Brandon Jackson said he was signed out of his Amazon account and his Echo devices, leaving him unable to interact with them from May 25 to May 31 of this year.
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In an article published on blog site Medium, Jackson said “everything seemed fine” after he had a package delivered on May 24, but was locked out of his Echo Show device the next day.
“This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions,” he wrote.
“My initial assumption was that someone might have attempted to access my account repeatedly, triggering a lockout.”
But his account was secure.
After contacting a representative for help, an Amazon assistant asked him to check his inbox, to which he found an email with a phone number for an executive at the company.
When Jackson called with an executive, they began the call by asking him if he knew why he was locked out.
“When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory,” he wrote.
“I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my ‘Ring doorbell‘ (it’s actually a Eufy, but I’ll let it slide).”
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Jackson then claimed he had video footage proving that no interaction occurred, and that there was nobody else home at the time who could have made such a comment.
The homeowner said he suspects his Eufy doorbell’s automated response of “Excuse me, can I help you?” was misheard by the delivery driver, who was allegedly wearing headphones.
Following an investigation, an Amazon spokesperson has said Jackson was not found to have acted inappropriately.
Amazon spokesperson Simone Griffin told The Sun: “We work hard to provide customers with a great experience while also ensuring drivers who deliver Amazon packages feel safe.
“In this case, we learned through our investigation that the customer did not act inappropriately, and we’re working directly with the customer to resolve their concerns while also looking at ways to prevent a similar situation from happening again.”
Jackson said he is now questioning his loyalty to Amazon over how the tech giant handled the investigation.
“After nearly a decade of loyalty, I’ve been given a harsh reminder that a misunderstanding can lead to such drastic measures,” he wrote.
“It seems more reasonable to handle such issues in a more compartmentalised way, rather than a blanket shutdown of all services.”
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