How I was Robbed by Amazon Mechanical Turk

I'll start with a short overview of what Amazon Mechanical Turk, or AMT for short, does for those of you who may not know. AMT is a freelancer work website, much like freelancer.com, oDesk, or Elance. People, they are called Requesters, post various jobs that they need done. You can find transcription work there, they have writing assignments, editing, and so on. You name it, you can probably find it on AMT.

Amazon serves as an escrow between the Requester and the worker, commonly called a turker. The Requestor decides what project they need done and how much they are willing to pay. They deposit the funds into their AMT account and post the project. The turker comes alongs and accepts the project, referred to as a HIT, which stands for Human Intelligence Task, and submits it to the Requester when he is done with the task.The Requester then looks at the work and decides if he is satisfied with it. Once he approves the work, he hits the approve button to clear the funds to be sent to the worker.

This is where AMT tends to get sneaky and clever. As most online sites do, AMT has a long, complicated, pretty much impossible for the average person to understand TOS just chock full of all kinds of legalese jargon. If, for any reason, and often for no discernible reason at all, they decide that you *may* have violated some part of their TOS, they summarily suspend you. No notice, no warning, nothing. Just automatic suspension.

When you email them to appeal or ask why you were suspended, you get a standard form letter that says their system detected activity that they believeviolates the Participation Agreement/Conditions of Use.
They then go on to inform you that they do not disburse funds for suspended accounts and tells you to review the Participation Agreement/Conditions of Use.

That's right. They suspend you. They refuse to even tell you what you did to violate their TOS and then they freeze your Amazon Payments Account and block you from getting the money that the Requesters have tried to pay you for doing their task. The Requesters obviously didn't have a problem with the work that was submitted, or they would not have approved the task. AMT just decides on their own that they aren't going to release the funds to you, despite what the Requester wants.

It's a nice little scheme AMT has going there. One that they have made untold hundreds of dollars from. I know, for myself personally, they scammed me for over $100. Just a few minutes of research on Google and there are dozens of similar stories of people being suspended and their funds seized by AMT with no appeals process, no mediation, no recourse whatsoever. They ignore your emails and, conveniently, have no phone number to call.

I have been fighting with them for over a month. I filed a complaint with the BBB and am working their their system to see if I can get my funds released. At this point, I don'teven care about my suspension or even *why* I was suspended. I just want my funds that I earned and that the people I worked for tried to send me. If the BBB route doesn't get results, I will be contacting my State Attorney General's office and looking into legal action.

Given how many people have had their money seized by AMT, I would not be the least bit surprised if a class action suit came out of this.Even the police and government have to tell you what you are charged with and such before just seizing your funds. Why does AMT seem to think they can do it and get away with it? Have *you* been ripped off by AMT? If so, feel free to contact me or leave comments here. Let's spread the word about AMT's underhanded, ununscrupulous behavior and maybe even prevent anyone else from falling victim to it.