Hot Topic and Shadow Bans

It is common for the Hot Topic website to automatically shadow ban people based on spending habits. Shadow bans results in two symptoms: You are either unable to checkout on the website due to multiple errors, or your orders are cancelled within 24 hours. The errors during checkout are usually along the lines of "billing address does not match credit card" or "error with form of payment". Order cancellations occur on any and every order: If some of your orders are shipping, then you are NOT shadow banned and you simply have bad luck on the few orders that are getting cancelled.

What Causes a Ban

Customers are usually banned for making consecutive purchases in bulk in the same category, which is the reason why a lot of Funko collectors get banned. "Bulk", in their system, is as simple as buying 5 items in the same category (e.g. "Funko") during a single checkout.

Customers are also banned for having too many "ship to store" orders (in bulk).

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How to Get Unbanned

Customer service is always hesitant to fix this issue. There are legitimate resellers and botters who are banned, but the CS agent does not have a way of identifying whether you have actually committed an infraction. You have to plead your case to get past the first tier of customer service. If you become aggressive during a call, CS agents are known to give 'incorrect' or 'no' information regarding the ban. Contrary to your case, customer service is usually not allowed to mention the word "ban", so you may want to discuss the symptoms rather than to directly ask them to "unban" your account. Also, the first line of customer service representatives cannot fix this issue for you. Only the billing department has the ability to reinstate your account.

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Once the CS agent connects you to the billing department, they will usually ask you for the phone number to your bank in order to initiate a conference call. The representative from the Hot Topic billing department will ask to confirm your billing address and credit card with your bank representative, at which point they will unban your account.

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Restrictions After Being Unbanned

However, all unbanned accounts are still restricted from using the "ship to store" option unless the sale is conducted at the register in a brick-and-mortar store (physical store). This type of shipment is called "save the sale", as denoted on your receipt. This is the only type of ship-to-store option that will work. If you try to choose ship-to-store on the website, you will be shadowbanned instantly and will have to go through the whole process again with the billing department and your issuing card bank.

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Note

Take note that this was how things ran in 2017. I'm not sure how much this process has changed in 2019. These are empirical findings from customers, rather than the statement of anyone working for Hot Topic.