[endominus]

Speaking of Amazon's account process, I have a really annoying problem with theirs. Apparently I somehow managed to create two amazon accounts with the same email address, but different passwords. They have different order histories and addresses and everything, but the account name is identical. It sometimes makes it confusing to tell why an order I placed hasn't shown up.

Interestingly, I can't change the password on one account to the password of the other account. The attempt fails. Which is... somewhat concerning.

[schlarpc]

This was considered a feature back in the day; it was called MASE - Multiple Account, Same Email. I'm pretty sure you can just change the email on one of them to get out of that state.

[lxgr]

Out of curiosity – what was the use case for that? It seems terribly confusing!

[jcrites]

The way it was explained to me: originally, Amazon didn't want there to be any barriers to someone making a purchase on the website, not even the barrier of having to reset a forgotten password. So the choice was made to allow people to create new accounts with the same email address (such as when attempting to check out; that's when this would likely happen). Each account was distinguished at login by its email + password combination.

It was indeed called "Multiple Accounts, Same Email", though I only heard that term applied to it much later (after the phenomenon of these accounts was identified as a problem that the company needed to resolve). I don't think it was exactly what I'd call a feature, in the sense that I don't think anyone expected users to do it intentionally, so much as it was "We don't want to lose a purchase to someone getting stuck at the login screen".

The Web and its users have evolved significantly since those early days, and resetting a password by email is no longer the barrier it once was. Among other reasons: web users are savvy to the idea of having accounts, which was not true in Amazon's early days; and email is a lot faster and more reliable now.

Allowing multiple accounts to share an email address proved to be a problematic decision later on for a number of reasons. Amazon doesn't allow this any more, at least not from the primary sign-in screen; it gives an "Email address already in use" error.

[hultner]

Microsoft have a similar problem relaterade to them merging a lot of services but not accounts. I have an old Xbox Live account on my Xbox 360 which I can’t reset the password for since the email/username was the same as for my Skype account and my Hotmail/MSN account back in the days. This mess is still causing me tons of problems anytime I try to log in to something Microsoft related.

[dlgeek]

Back in the late 90s, there weren't a ton of free email services and most people used an account from their ISP. Extra accounts were hard to come by. If you had a family sharing an internet connection, they might very well share an email address too. This let them have individual Amazon accounts.

[anshumankmr]

So I have an amazon.com and amazon.in account. The latter one is my main account but the former one I created to redeem a gift card I got from a survey.

[lxgr]

Seems more like an artifact of Amazon having enabled global logins late into product development than a "feature" to me.

Are you sure it's two accounts? I am using the same login on two different Amazon sites as well, but I'd call that SSO more so than "two accounts on one email address", since all data is separated by country, but the email and password are the same.

[joshspankit]

It’s an artifact, you’re right.

Source: I also had Amazon accounts in two separate countries and witnessed the different phases of global logins being implemented.

[anshumankmr]

It has separate order history

[etothepii]

Personally I use the + feature on email addresses to achieve this.

[e-mail]

Maps to the account me and will (if configured correctly) put the mail in a folder called folder if such exists.

The reason you might want many accounts with the same email seem many to me if you don't realise that you can create arbitrary distinct emails this easily.

[lxgr]

Yes, that's exactly what plus addresses exist for!

It seems to me like all benefits of the "exact same email, multiple accounts" feature are vastly outweighed by the inconvenience for users simply forgetting that they already have an account, and creating a second one by accident that way.

I mean, even I end up almost creating an account by accident every now and then (mostly on sites using the horrible "signup is the default, login needs one additional click" pattern), and I do so using autofill from a password manager!

[dgan]

Unfortunately many services think they are smarter than you, and disallow "+" in email fields

[Nekobai]

Indeed! And even worse, some services will happily accept "+" in email fields, but then some part of the service fails to encode the "+" sign correctly, so some features may be broken in unexpected ways.

Sometimes you can't even contact Customer Services because "your account doesn't exist" (because you cannot feed the correct email address to their customer service site).

Thankfully it's rare, but when it happens it's extremely infuriating.

[xp84]

Just so you know, that plus-hack is by no means universal (in addition to the frustrating “you can’t use a plus sign” thing you’ll encounter at various email fields around the net).

Gmail supports it. Microsoft does not. Neither does Yahoo/AOL. It likely was not widely supported in the 90s either. It’s a nice hack but it doesn’t solve every problem.

[sharkmerry]

You are not alone!!! I am in the exact same situation. I've told this to so many people and no one believes. I'm stunned I stumbled on this. Small world

[hereonout2]

Yes me too, depending which password I use I get a different account with same email! Madness

[glenngillen]

I have this too, though I assumed it was some legacy of creating accounts in different geos (i.e., .com.au, .co.uk, and .com).

[dylan604]

Is it possible that one account was created using an email address and the second account using a phone number, and then some where down the line each account got updated with the missing information so that now both accounts look identical?

[jwrallie]

I had a similar issue when I created two accounts on different regions using the same email address, then Amazon started operating in my country and they started redirecting one of the accounts to my country, leaving me with a mess of two accounts that would randomly connect to three different regions.

It was really annoying as I would login on my browser to one account normally, but when I ordered an Amazon stick, it came with a different account from a different region preinstalled and would complain I didn't signed up for Prime.

I ultimately fixed the issues by manually changing the email on each account to a different address, but it was very confusing until I figured out what was happening.

[pmontra]

Oh well, not Amazon but I got stuck in the ecommerce of a large shop chain. I can't register because they tell me I already have an account. So I use that email to recover the password but I can't because the account must be activated. So I ask for an activation link but I can't because that account doesn't exist. I guess they have different databases or microservices taking care of different steps of the registration process and something crashed at the wrong time and my overall record is inconsistent. I gave up a couple of years ago. I buy from them when I go to one of their physical shops.

[sizzle]

Holy crap I did this this on accident when I tried signing up for an Alexa skill in the Alexa app and accidentally created a new account with same Amazon.com email address, then got flagged for suspicious activity cause I was on a VPN and got blacklisted. It took so many calls for customer support to acknowledge there was even an issue and they still told me to just use a different email in the end. I was passed and just made a new Amazon account with the original email address, but simply added a period in the middle and still use it while locked out of the other original account. It’s bonkers lol

[Izkata]

I have no idea if this would work and don't want to risk messing it up for myself, but have you tried changing (one of) the account emails?

On the website go to the Your Account page ("Account & Lists" dropdown -> "Your Account" section -> "Account" link, which goes to https://www.amazon.com/gp/css/homepage.html ) and click "Login & security" to get to it. Same place you'd update your password/etc.

[endominus]

Maybe that would work, but I'm also concerned about messing something up. In particular, tripping some bot detection/account duplication algorithm and getting my account banned and all its content gone. I'll suffer the small annoyance rather than risking the black swan disaster.

[Reason077]

I wouldn't worry about that. I've had multiple Amazon accounts (with different emails!) going back many years. Never been an issue. They even make it easy to switch between them with the "switch accounts" function.

[darkvertex]

Same here. In my case my Amazon.com and Amazon.ca are separate accounts sharing different passwords yet the same email. Fucking weird.

[toast0]

I've done this, but I was pretty sure I managed to have both accounts with the same password at that point in time. On the plus side, you can change email addresses, so now I have amazon@ and amazon2@ and all is sensible again.

[verelo]

I have this exact issue too. Let me know if you ever fix it!

[voidmain0001]

You have two separate Amazon accounts on the same TLD? Example amazon.ca and amazon.com.

[endominus]

They're on the same TLD; amazon.com. I assume they were merged from some service Amazon bought and combined user accounts with, but I honestly am not sure.

[Reason077]

Couldn't you solve this by changing the email address on one of the accounts?

[dporter]

Can you change the password to something unrelated, but are unable to change it to the same? Seems like they might not be salting their passwords?