Closing an Amazon account after a death
An Amazon account often keeps charging after a death. Prime renews, subscriptions arrive, and the card on file keeps paying. This page explains how Amazon handles a deceased customer's account and what to settle before you ask it to close.
What Amazon can do
Amazon's bereavement support team handles accounts of customers who have died. What it will do depends on the documents you send.
With the death certificate and the account's email address or phone number, Amazon's page says it can end subscriptions, stop recurring deliveries and deactivate the account.
To close the account, get information about it, or make other changes, Amazon asks for proof that you are the legal representative of the estate. The full list is below.
Decide this first
- Digital purchases do not pass on. Kindle books, films and music bought on Amazon are licensed to the account holder. They are not transferred to family, and they go when the account closes.
- Gift card balances generally do not transfer and are not refunded. If there is a balance, it can be spent on the account before the closure request goes in.
- Audible and Prime Video charges can be billed separately. Check the card statement for each.
What Amazon asks for
To stop subscriptions and deliveries, or deactivate the account:
- The death certificate.
- The email address or phone number on the account.
To close the account or act on it as the estate's representative:
- The death certificate.
- A document showing you are the legal representative of the estate, such as Letters Testamentary.
- Your own photo ID.
- The email address or phone number on the account.
If you do not know the account's email address, Amazon asks for something else that identifies it, such as an order number from a package or confirmation email, or a charge ID from a card statement.
Amazon's page also says that someone with access to the account's email or phone can sign in and close the account themselves. We never sign in to a person's account. We use the bereavement process.
How to do it yourself
Amazon's help page is here: Amazon bereavement support. The request is made by email, to bereavement-support-cs@amazon.com, with the documents attached. Amazon's page says the documents are deleted once they have been checked.
Responses have tended to arrive within one to two weeks.
If you would rather not do this twenty times
Amazon is usually one of many. Email, photo storage, shopping, streaming, subscriptions still charging a card. Most families do not know what accounts exist until the statements arrive.
We check your loved one's identifiers against the platforms people actually use, confirm what each one requires, and submit the closure or memorialization requests through each platform's official process, including Amazon. We work from a death certificate and proof of authority. We never ask for a password. When the last platform has replied, you receive one closure report covering every platform we checked, including where no account was found.
Standard Closure is $300. Custom Closure, which adds the accounts you name, is $400. The fee is agreed before we begin.
We are not affiliated with Amazon. Amazon's process and timing are Amazon's, and can change. Financial, investment and government accounts are outside what we handle; the executor deals with those directly.