If your tax information is verified they will allow you withdrawl of your money. Also if you live in the us im pretty sure regardless you get your cash. however over seas accounts and the law regarding that money is a whole nother ballgame.
I think you only have something to worry about is if you lied to Amazon when signing up. Then you may have your account closed. I don't think they are randomly closing accounts just for fun.
Sorry Playa.. not true. If you are banned because you have broken the TOS (Terms Of Service) you will not receive your money not matter where you live. If you are banned for poor performance you will receive any money that you have earned. You breaking the TOS would nullify the "contract" between yourself and AMT and therefore they legally would not have to pay you as you have already broken the contract. I am assuming this is their way of thinking. So basically... if you don't break their TOS you should be just fine!
It doesn't happen often. But if you happen to work for a lot of shitty requesters that end up blocking you, you could very well get banned. No need to freak out about it, plenty of people have worked on mTurk for years and never gotten banned. It's just something to keep in the back of your mind: do your best and be careful who you work for.
It seems like 95% of those who get banned deserve it, but I've personally known people who I'm sure were good, honest workers who got banned/suspended because of a mistake on Amazon's end (and most were able to get their accounts reinstated after a few emails.) It's really rare, but it does happen. The frequency is so low it's not really worth worrying about, tho.
playa...tax info and primary address... Because they've verified the shit outta my SSN. Still no word on the latest primary I gave them. As for "stolen" money - maybe it's a translation issue but they didn't steal anything. They just haven't released about $25 to me. It's still there and I will have access to it at some point, but they didn't take it. The balance remains. still fekkin bummed though
There is this really good article by somebody on yahoo voice. It gives me chills and coldsweat. http://voices.yahoo.com/amazoncom-mechanicalturk-cheats-online-workers-of-8209237.html
That article is over a year old. It's an inflammatory piece of muck by someone disgruntled or reading flaming posts found elsewhere. Who here, in the last year, has found that their deposit was effectively reversed by Amazon? I haven't seen any threads on it. I don't think the article should be held as a standard.
How is that a "good" article? There is not one piece of information backed by actual facts in there. Sounds like somebody spreading rumors about the pretty girl in high school.
Ok, first off I don't consider that a "good" article. I find it false and inflammatory. I think there are a lot more workers who have been paid and treated fairly by Mturk than there are those who have been suspended unfairly. That article says no one gets paid by Amazon- You set up your account, do the work and they steal your money. Hmmmmm I've been doing this for months now and hasn't happened to me! I have hundreds of dollars in my checking account I didn't have before I started working on Mturk. Furthermore, and this won't be popular here on this forum but here it goes anyway. I personally feel that all of the bitching and moaning about Mturk on forums such as this creates many of the problems some of you seem to "fear". People griping about how unfair Mturk is every day on here and how poorly they treat their workers and how horrible those penny HITS are. You know what? If I'm not happy with a job- I LEAVE IT! Instead of dragging all of Mturk down with "lets form a union" or "write a letter" and "they are horrible to work for". How about you just quit Mturk and take the negativity elsewhere. I've worked a lot of different jobs. Guess what? Something about EVERY job sucks. If you've truly been treated unfairly by Mturk (and I don't feel that them not approving foreign accounts is unfair since it's a US based company) I sympathize with you. But I think 99% of the time, Amazon is in the right in suspending the accounts of poor or scam workers. Is everything great about Mturk? Heck no! But I haven't found a job yet that was all wine and roses! Again, I'm sure some people have been treated unfairly. I saw it in the "real" workplace so I'm sure it happens in the "virtual" one also. But I do believe that most of the complaining is baseless and the bottomline is, If you don't like the rules, go find another job. You know there are unfair requesters out there. We've all run into them. There are also crappy bosses in the workplace. You either suck it up and handle it or you quit. Or you can go join a supposed class action suit like the one mentioned in the article and try to bring down Mturk. That would be just jolly for all of us wouldn't it?
I have been reading some online complaints by Indians about their accounts being suspended and here is a post by one of the person: Answer from haivijay: hi sir my % nearly 95 why r u my account suspented .so please re active sir. friends one more doubht any possible to mturk suspend account to active account. and the link to his post: http://askville.amazon.com/restart-mturk-account-suspended/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=87121542 The point is, I believe that only those accounts from India are suspended, who are not able to write a proper sentence in English, then just think about the quality of work they might have done in mturk and isn't mturk right in suspending their account. Most of the online complaints on the internet are like that post only.
OOPS....Now I see it's an old article. Sorry about the rant but I almost hate coming on this forum anymore because everyday there are, what I consider baseless, complaints about Mturk. It's not all good- believe me I know that. But for the most part it is giving people like myself who like working from home a viable option.
I agree with you kristilec, that most of the indian accounts that are being suspended is due to poor work. Since mturk is free, everybody thinks that they can earn money from them but not everyone is able to turn out a good work.