Amazon shuts down customer’s smart home when delivery man thinks he hears a racist slur

Brandon Jackson was reportedly locked out of his Amazon smart home system in May and was told by the company that it was because of alleged “racist remarks” made by his doorbell device.

The alleged incident occurred on May 25 and he was locked out of his Amazon Echo Show. When Jackson, who is black, called Amazon customer service he was informed he had been locked out because of a racial slur made by his Ring doorbell to a driver delivering a package.

The assertion was made in a June 4 blog post on Medium titled, “A Tale of Unwanted Disruption: My Week Without Amazon.” Jackson has also posted a video explaining what happened and why he’s concerned. He was locked out of his Amazon smart devices for nearly a week after attempting to use the Amazon Echo Show which is a device that can control a variety of connected smart home tools.

When he was originally sent the number by email to call an Amazon executive, he thought he was being scammed. It evidently was not a scam and the reaction by the Amazon executive took him by surprise.

“When I connected with the executive, they asked if I knew why my account had been locked,” he wrote on Medium. “When I answered I was unsure, their tone turned somewhat accusatory. I was told that the driver who had delivered my package reported receiving racist remarks from my ‘Ring doorbell.'”

(Video Credit: YouTube/Brandon Jackson)

Jackson wasn’t buying the accusation because many of the delivery drivers in his area are the same race and contended that the racial slur was “highly unlikely.”

He determined the time the driver would have dropped off his package which was May 24 at 6:05 pm. He then compared that to the footage from his home when the incident occurred. At that time, nobody was home. Jackson believes what his Eufy automated doorbell said to the driver was, “Excuse me, can I help you?”

“The driver, who was walking away and wearing headphones, must have misinterpreted the message,” Jackson contended.

Even after he showed Amazon proof of what he claimed, his account remained locked.

“Despite numerous calls and emails, it wasn’t until Friday afternoon [on May 26] that I received confirmation that the investigation had started,” he wrote on the blog, noting that it wasn’t until May 31 that access was finally restored.

Amazon issued a statement to NTD News concerning the incident, “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 had already been considering alternate ways to control his devices when this happened.

“I already had everything set up so if something did fail I have fallbacks so I wasn’t truly in the dark,” Jackson noted in a video. “But I wrote [my blog post] from the perspective of someone who—what if they didn’t do all that.”

Ironically, Jackson is an engineer with Microsoft and is tech-savvy. He wanted to share his concerns with homeowners who use smart home devices and aren’t as into the tech as he is in case they find themselves locked out for one reason or another.

He said that the ordeal caused him to lose trust in Amazon especially since he was locked out for nearly a week after providing evidence to exonerate himself.

“I fully support Amazon taking measures to ensure the safety of their drivers. However, I question why my entire smart home system had to be rendered unusable during their internal investigation,” he charged.

“After nearly a decade of loyalty, I’ve been given a harsh reminder that a misunderstanding can lead to such drastic measures… Due to this experience, I am seriously considering discontinuing my use of Amazon Echo devices and will caution others about this incident,” he wrote on Medium.

Jackson is adamant that Amazon and other companies should not have the power to block people from using smart products because they expressed opinions the companies don’t agree with.

“If you bought a toaster right, it doesn’t matter what you did, how bad of a person you were how good of a person you are, you still own the toaster at the end of the day right?” he pointed out. “And if you really did do something that was so horrible and bad that shouldn’t be Amazon or Google or Apple’s call to do anything about that. You know, we already have a system set up for that and that’s what you should be going through.”

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