Customer service representatives at Amazon received a slew of inquiries from customers over the weekend who had received email confirmation messages for purchases they never made on gift cards.
Customers reported receiving three consecutive emails, some on Saturday night and others on Sunday morning, thanking them for their purchases of Google Play, Mastercard, and Hotels.com gift cards, despite never actually making these purchases.
CNBC, the American news network, quoted an Amazon spokesperson as saying, “A glitch in our system led to the erroneous sending of order confirmation emails to customers who had not purchased gift cards. We are now sending emails to these customers to notify them of the error and apologize for any inconvenience.”
Customers who received the erroneous email confirmation messages are not required to take any further action.
The mistaken confirmation messages sent by Amazon contain a paragraph warning users about potential gift card fraud: “There is a variety of fraud schemes in which scammers try to trick others into paying with gift cards from well-known brands.” These messages left customers puzzled and concerned that hackers may have gained access to their financial information and used it to purchase these gift cards.
One of Amazon’s customer service representatives explained the incident by saying that the poorly worded emails were meant to caution customers about potential fraud.
