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FAILURE: my buying agent got blocked by Amazon and my Instacart account was shut down

A travel advisor used AI for client quotes and purchases. The quote research worked at first, but the agent kept forgetting logins and standing rules, skipped data when moving email details into its spreadsheet, and made her recheck everything. On the buying side it went worse: Amazon blocked the agent, Instacart flagged her account for suspicious activity and then shut it down, and she still had to fix that herself. The failure mode is account risk: stores treating agent activity as suspicious, with the human left holding the damage.

This one went wrong. Read what happened so you don’t hit the same problem.

How it works

  1. Research client quotes from her email
  2. Move details into a spreadsheet
  3. Attempt purchases through Amazon and Instacart
  4. Amazon blocks the agent
  5. Instacart flags the account for suspicious activity
  6. Account shut down
  7. She rechecks all output and fixes the account herself

Why it’s worth knowing

The cost was not a wrong answer. It was a shut shopping account that she now has to repair by hand.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on reddit.com. See the original ↗

Upgraded prompt

A ready-to-use prompt for this idea, built from research on what makes AI agents do the job right: who the AI should be, the exact steps, and a check to make sure it was done the way you wanted.

1Who the AI should be
2The prompt, with the steps
3The check when it’s done
Upgraded prompts are coming soon.

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