The last time I used Amazon Chime it worked. Now it doesn’t.
The last time I used Amazon Chime it started failing in the middle of a six week class. The problem was that I had signed up for a Pro account but at some point the free trial ended. I had to jump through a number of hoops to try to fix that problem. I would have paid for the free trial. I didn’t care about that. I just wanted it to work.
Today I thought I’d just login and test it again and schedule a meeting.
BUT NO.
Once again I’m going in circles upon circles to try to set up an AWS Chime user account. Somehow an AWS Chime user account is connected to an Amazon account.
That is just wrong. I have phone numbers associated with accounts I use to buy things and I don’t want those accounts associated with an account I use for Chime calls.
The PROBLEM is that I cannot create a new Chime account if an email or phone number is associated with some other account. I have so many Amazon and AWS accounts that I don’t even know which phone number is associated with what. I have separate accounts for different purposes.
Let me reuse a number in a personal shopping account on a business chime account.
Let me reuse a business number on a business shopping account on a separate Amazon account for Chime.
Let me use a number associated with an AWS account with Amazon Chime.
So I try to create new accounts and login with accounts and I get error after error saying that I cannot create a new account because that email or phone number is already in use. I keep trying and trying different options like logging in with a phone number and resetting the password to figure out which account that phone number is associated with. At one point I figure out that the phone number is associated with an Amazon personal shopping account. I remove it.
Then I can create (actually re-create) the account I’m creating for Chime. At some point it says an account with that number already exists. So I repeat the process of resetting the password for the phone number — and lo and behold it is associated with the account I’m trying to associate it with!
WHAT?!?!?!
This is frustrating.
But then I get to the end and over and over again it tells me that it can’t verify my account when I click the email to verify it — because it already exists! I mean, I just created it.
At some point earlier I called customer service because I couldn’t reset a password on a Chime account because I couldn’t remember what name I put on it. It was an account for testing AWS Chime calls prior to sending a meeting out. Customer service sent me instructions to override the fact that an account already exists for an email when trying to create it. I’m supposed to recreate the account because I cannot remember the name on the account since I just used it for Chime calls.
So I decide to try to do that with the other account I’m trying to set up that used to exist. But then I get a message that says that if I go through the steps whatever the other account is associated with the number will be deleted. I’m not sure what they other account is because I just removed it from an Amazon shipping account. Is there another account besides that one where that number is in use? I don’t think so. I think it’s a conflict somehow with the account in AWS SSO. But that is the account I have registered with Chime and I don’t want to delete it! Is that going to get deleted?
After going around in circles for hours, I finally get this error somehow:
What the?! This was all working before Amazon. Why when I come back to login is everything suddenly broken? People can’t afford this and if Chime is to be viable it really just needs to not suddenly start failing.
And if it does fail — make it clear now to fix it. The above error message is useless. I AM the administrator!
I have wasted hours of my life trying to simply set up a video call. I’m not even sure what to do at this point. I need sleep for a meeting tomorrow and looks like I’m not going to get it.
The fact that I have an SSO user seems like I shouldn’t have to create an Amazon account to login.
But people I’m sending a video link to need to be able to login without being in my list of SSO users.
This is a nightmare because I am trying to get ready for a meeting tomorrow and have other things to do besides troubleshoot Amazon chime. If I was setting up a video call in Zoom or GoTo Meeting or even Google Meet it would probably just work.
I hope Amazon can make this simpler!
Just tell me how to fix it in simple terms — without setting up Active Directory or Okta — and I’ll do it. And don’t make me pay for customer support to get an answer because this was all working the last time I used it!
Teri Radichel
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Amazon Chime is PAINFUL. was originally published in Bugs That Bite on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
