Mark Carroll's Journal

With relocations, I am usually very good at updating contact details, not much falls through the cracks. Last time I was in Taguig, I was thus rather surprised to try to log in to Amazon US and have it want to SMS me at a number that I have not used for a long time. To fix this, they wanted me to telephone a US number, I wasn't about to do that from there, goodness knows how long the process would take and, well, there are other vendors, they can live without my money.

Fortunately, once I got back to Scotland and tried logging in again, Amazon returned to not asking for 2FA. I was able to log in and find out what had happened: I had updated the telephone numbers on delivery addresses but there is also a number noted in Login & security that I had wholly missed, partly because they use it so rarely, probably mostly because I did not think to look for telephone numbers in multiple sections. Amazon protects that section with 2FA but, fortunately, it sends by e-mail too, so I was able to gain access and correct the number.

Curiously^*, I do already seem to have updated my telephone number with Amazon UK, that one was correct. It is annoying to need multiple accounts at all^†, especially as the sites clearly share backend systems in some regards. Though, more annoying is, from Taguig, if I go to Amazon UK, I can't just click, show me UK things, I must enter a UK postal code to see the domestic offering. It is similar for Amazon US, it needs a zip code. As usual, websites' geolocation-based context is not what I want; Amazon makes me supply a domestic location to bypass it.

^*Update: On reflection, it is not curious at all: I use a US number for Amazon US and a UK number for Amazon UK, and I changed those numbers at different times.

^†Update: On further reflection, some sites where I did appear to be able to use the same account through relocation ran into odd problems that were fixed by user support in the end but appeared to be rather off their typical script and involved, in some way, switching me from being a US user to a UK user. Whereas, Netflix simply tell one straight: cancel then wait then rejoin (paraphrased).