Amazon insists I return a phone it says ‘may be lost’

Amazon tracking said an ordered phone ‘may be lost’ – but for a refund, it had to be returned. Photograph: Joseph Gaul/Alamy

I ordered a £544 phone from Amazon. A tracking update later informed me that it “may be lost” and I could request a refund. I pressed the refund option and was directed to customer service, which insisted I wait a week to claim.

A week later I was told I needed to file an incident report from the email address associated with my account. When I complied, the report was rejected as coming from an address that “didn’t meet certain security standards”.