This is a post that will outline some things for any new MTurkers that have an Amazon Payments Business account as opposed to a Personal Account. If you have a Business account, you will not be able to withdraw your MTurk PAID earnings for an additional 14 days after the hit was PAID. First, lets back up... I started an Amazon Payments Business account prior to working for MTurk for an unrelated reason (Kickstarter Project). I never ended up using it. So then I signed up for MTurk, and it linked up with my Amazon Payments Business account. I worked on MTurk for the first 10 days (the time required by MTurk for your hits to start getting PAID). After the 10 days was up I noticed that the money being paid out was not available to my Amazon payments business account. It was listed in my "Account Balance", but my "Dispursable Balance" was only showing the money the was earned on the very same day. My entire account balance is unavailable to be withdrawn. After contacting Amazon payments about 15 times, I finally got semi-clarification on this. That is not an exaggeration. I emailed them 10 times and called them 5 times. Every time they responded, but they never addressed my specific questions. They continued to tell me the same thing "Your account is a Business account and you must wait 14 days before your balance is available". Then they proceeded to tell me "we will close your account when you withdraw your money and you can sign up for a new personal account". As you might imagine, I had some very specific concerns when they told me this. For one, I needed to know what is going to happen to my current pending HITs that have not been paid out yet. For two, I wanted to know on which day they will close my account. Will it be after I make my first withdrawal, second withdrawal, or on which specific date. Long story short they kept telling me all of my earnings would be paid before they close the account and I sign up for a new personal account. Once again, this makes no sense when I continue to work on MTurk and have over 100 pending HITs to be PAID soon. This is important to me because you remember that 14 day period I have to wait to withdraw my money? Well today marks the 14th day from when my first PAID HIT posted to my Amazon payments account. So that technically means that all of the PAID hits that posted on September 29th will be available to me today or tomorrow. Then the Paid HITS from September 30th will be available on 10/14, and so forth. So you can see why it might be a concern for me when I have $250 that I have earned in the past 3.5 weeks that I still have not been able to withdraw from MTurk HITS and my Amazon payments account. But apparently amazon payments customer service does not like to respond to specific questions. Long story short... Today marks 14 days from the day that my first HIT on MTurk was PAID into my Amazon Payments Business account. And what does my account show? $250 account balance, yet I have a -$1.01 Disbursable Balance. Yep, a negative balance. How is this possible when I have no other transactions except PAID MTurk hits for the past 3.5 weeks. If what Amazon Payments told me was correct, then the money I earned on September 29th should have been available to me today, but it isnt. I should have $39 available today. Then $60 tomorrow (that was PAID on 9/30). I have no clue as to whether I will ever be able to get my money. To top that off, I have to wait until Monday to even call them and ask why my Disbursable Balance shows a -$1.01, when I should have had the money that I made on 9/29 available today (because today is 14 days from 9/29 as required for Business accounts). My best advice is that ANYONE joining MTurk make darn sure that you sign up for an Amazon Payments Personal account as opposed to a Business account. If you don't, they will hold your money until there is no tomorrow... And when you call/email them about it they will give you some very unthoughtful responses that clearly do not correlate to any of your specific questions. I even tried numbering them out but they did not understand that either. And no disrespect, but to those that are going to ask these questions... Yes im in the USA, yes I have a verified checking account in the USA, yes my tax information is verified, yes all information is verified. Yes my account is in good standing (99.3% approval rate on 650 HITs), blah blah blah... This is a specific issue for all that are using an Amazon payments BUSINESS account as opposed to a PERSONAL account.
I have a business account and I had it before I joined MTurk. I have been MTurking for about I think 4 months. I still cannot get the rest of my Dispursable Balance. They hold onto about $25.00-$30.00 permanently it seems in case there's a dispute with a payment with a customer. Like you, I never used my business account either. Even today, well 4 months later, anything I make AFTER $25.00-$30.00 I can keep or withdraw. This makes me mad. Like you, I tried contacting them as well but got vague responses. They did suggest closing the business account and get a personal account but that would mean that my MTurk stats would have to start all over again I think.
Thanks for the reply... Currently I have $250 in my account balance. And now my Disbursable Balance is 0.25 cents. My first HIT was paid on September 29th into my Payments account. Still waiting to be able to withdraw any money. According to them the Disbursable Balance is the amount that is available for you to withdraw.
I had the same thing happen. I eventually got this bizarre reply when I asked if they were going to close my account: This was after I submitted the needed information to upgrade to Tier II. The disbursable balance bit is gone, so I'm assuming I'm at Tier II now. I don't see a way to check. Paid HITs have been clearing without issue since then, though I have two "Failed" payments from that bizarre period where they told me my account would be closed. I decided it was better to write the small amount of money off than risk another confrontation with Payments support. I get the impression they're working from a script, and the script for "business account + Mechanical Turk" is "close the account and tell the user to make a new one."
Sounds about right to me. When I initially called them, a lady told me that she was going to recommend my account to be upgraded to Tier II. I told her they had already denied that to me, and she said she was going to email someone and recommend it to be done. But it has been a never ending battle of trying to understand the reply emails they give me. Still sitting on $250 in my account balance and less then $1 in my "Disbursable Balance" today. I dont know when my money will be available, my MTurk transactions started posting to my account on 9/29 so I was hoping they would start being available to me today
I had a business account for 5 months or so before joining MTurk and am not experiencing any of these problems. They did make me wait for 14 days before my first disbursement (long before Turking), but now I'm able to transfer any amount I want - I've been taking out whole dollar amounts and just leaving the change. I receive the funds in my bank account within 2 business days. I wonder what the difference is? To the OP - have you taken a disbursement from that account before starting Turking?
Thanks for the reply. I have never had any transactions in the account prior to using MTurk. No credits or debits. Today marks the 14th day and I still cannot access my funds. I have earning from September 29th, and every day since then. Today being the 13th, That is 14 days (or 15 if you count the 29th). Still have a Disbursable Balance of less then $1 when my account balance is $250.
Now Day 16 and my funds are not available. Im beginning to think the only way I will get my money is if I file a police report and sue Amazon.com. My account balance is now $260 and my disbursable balance is only $6.
When you log into your account click on Help, then click on Contact Us, then click on Email Us. If your default setting is selected to contact them regarding your "Merchant or Developer Account" as opposed to "Personal Account" then you have a Business account.
Yeah that sounds good to me. They are refusing to release some $25-30 for 4 months now. I don't know why they can't SEE that we aren't using our business accounts for business and release the funds to us. Would be different if we were dealing with customers and they hold the funds in case there's a dispute and all that but not in our cases... Are you able to see what your disbursable balance is or the page where you withdraw? Amazon is not letting me get into that page for 2 days now telling me that it isn't working and to try again later. I get this: We're Sorry An error occurred when we tried to process your request. Rest assured, we're working to resolve the problem as soon as possible. Please try your operation later. We apologize for the inconvenience. Very ridiculous. 2 days! If i wanted to withdraw my money, I couldn't..for 2 days now.
Also, if they hold onto the earnings you have earned until the day you die... Then you have an Amazon Payments Business account, I guarantee it
I can see everything Flora as normal. It just shows my Disbursable Balance of $6 and my account balance is $260. I should have over $100 available to me today according to their terms of service. They told me I needed to wait 14 days between when the transaction posted to my Amazon Payments business account. September 29th I had $40 post and September 30th I had $60 post. Yet I cant touch any of it. I am so sick of these lying bastard thieves
Since you said you could, I decided to go try it on Internet Explorer. I was using Chrome and it wouldn't let me in. On IE, it worked! Thanks for letting me know you had no problems on your side which caused me to investigate on other browsers. Anyway, now I see my disbursable balance as $34.00. That's the amount I cannot get for 4 months now. Anything I make after $34.00 goes into my account balance. Yes, I am sick of these lying bastard thieves too. I'm going to wait until my 6th month and see if there's any changes. I recall reading somewhere that in 6 months, my account can be moved up to tier II. If that helps get rid of the locked disbursable balance...great...then I'll wait. But if not...then I'm pissed.
Well the way my account is showing, my "Disbursable Balance" is the amount available for me to withdraw. The total account balance is not. My total account balance is $260. But I only have a $6 Disbursable balance which is available for me to withdraw. I have not been able to withdraw ANY MONEY at all since starting. Thats $260 of work. Ridiculous.
LOL... I emailed Amazon Payments support and this is the exact response they sent to me! "Hello Seth, I'm sorry for the issues you've experienced with your account balance. This issue will be best handled by an Amazon Payments account specialist, so I've sent your information to the appropriate team for further assistance. They will look into your account and respond to you via e-mail in the next 1-2 business days. I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. We look forward to seeing you again soon. Kaylee K. Amazon Payments https://payments.amazon.com " So Amazon Payments Support is forwarding my email to them to another Amazon payments Support team. GREAT. Another 1-2 day wait period. This is email number 16 in the past month of working on MTurk. And I am still broke because they have not released any of my $260 for withdrawal.