After weeks of roadblocks, Plympton fire chief finally able to order critical supplies on Amazon

PLYMPTON, Mass. — After weeks of back and forth with Amazon, Plympton’s fire chief is finally able to order personal protective equipment for his department.

“We’ve been a business/municipal customer of Amazon for quite a while,” said Chief Stephen Silva, who also serves as the town’s emergency management director. “They’ve always been very good to us.”

Silva said he logged into his Amazon account about a month ago only to find he suddenly unable to order critical supplies from the online retailer.

“We had noticed some of the supplies we had been ordering had no longer been available unless they had went to an organization that had been vetted by Amazon,” said Silva.

As the coronavirus pandemic intensified last month, Amazon stopped selling certain supplies to the public, reserving items like N-95 masks, face shields, exam gloves and sanitizers for essential organizations, including fire departments.

The organizations were instructed to fill out an online form on Amazon’s website to get approval to purchase the items.

"It makes absolute perfect sense," said Silva. "It seemed so easy. Just fill out the form and send it in. We've already been vetted by them in past. They know who we are. They have our whole tax exempt status and such."

But days soon turned into weeks and Amazon still hadn’t approved the Plympton Fire Department’s account. All the while, the department’s supplies kept dwindling.

"We came very close to running dry on several key items, which we have taken care of through the help of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, the Massachusetts National Guard and donations from a few private citizens," said Silva.

Unable to reach Amazon by phone, the chief said he initiated several online chats with customer service representatives, but he still didn’t have any luck.

“The odd part was I do know of other fire departments in the area that were not customers originally, but had been vetted,” said Silva. “So we reached out to you guys at [Boston] 25 to see if you could break this log jam.”

Boston 25 News reached out to Amazon by email a couple of times over the past week. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman called us to say she’d look into the issue. An hour later, she followed up with us by email.

“Confirming that the account should be approved and the customer will be hearing directly from someone on the Amazon Business team soon,” the spokeswoman wrote.

“I commend Amazon 100-percent for limiting who can buy the critical supplies because we’ve all heard the horrible stories of hoarding,” said Silva. “It made sense to figure out who you’re really selling to, but the system failed in our case any ways.”

Silva told Boston 25 News an Amazon representative reached out to him by phone Tuesday evening to let him know his account has been approved to purchase COVID-19 supplies.

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