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Lose Your Amazon Account and Your Kindle Dies
Mike writes "If you buy a Kindle and some Kindle ebooks from Amazon, be careful of returning items. Amazon decided that one person had returned too many things, so they suspended his Amazon account, which meant that he could no longer buy any Kindle books, and any Kindle subscriptions he's paid for stop working. After some phone calls, Amazon granted him a one-time exception and reactivated his account again." Take this with as much salt as you'd like.
Myth:
If you buy a Kindle, you are locked into Amazon's Kindle store.
Truth:
There are many sources for books that can be read on the Kindle.
Some Free Sites (Public Domain / Creative Commons)
MobileRead.com (look for .mobi books you can download to your computer or download the MobiGuide
and get your books via Whispernet)
Feedbooks.com (books can be downloaded to your computer or if you download their Kindle Guide
you can get your books via Whispernet - they even have a video on how to use the guide)
Manybooks.net (when you download to your computer, look for Kindle format or Mobipocket)
1001Books (download books to your computer or directly from your Kindle browser)
Some Pay Sites
Fictionwise.com (look for .mobi books but NOT Secure Mobipocket books)
BooksonBoard.com (register your Kindle's PID and you can download any .mobi from their Overdrive servers -
to learn more about this see the Visual Kindle Guide wiki)
Baen.com (great site for Sci-Fi books which offers free as well as low cost books)
So your Kindle is still somewhat useful. I would hope that more competition arises and Amazon removes its Kindle services from its e-book services so as to avoid a nasty inevitable anti-trust suit.
My work here is dung.
Why do you say he was a dick ? I quote him:
The only things I HAVE returned were some large electronics - but honestly, ONLY when there were defects or flaws in them. If it works well, I keep it. Period.
That's completely legal and fair.
Anyway, this shows once
Actually, not even that's true. It's perfectly possible, and not even terribly difficult, to put non-DRM content onto a Kindle. Fictionwise will tell you how to do it, as will Baen books. Basically, losing his Amazon account just made it difficult (but not impossible) to put DRM'ed books on the Kindle. I'm not sure that's a minus..
I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to say, I finally won out - Elwood P. Dowd
Very interesting, however from Fictionwise FAQ:
:D All of Baen Books, on the other hand, appear to not be DRM'd.
I Have Seen Blog Articles On Methods That Allow DRM Mobipocket Books To Work On Kindle. Can I Use That Method On Fictionwise Secure Mobipocket eBooks?
We do not support the use of such methods to transfer Fictionwise Secure Mobipocket eBooks to Kindle. For one thing, Amazon could take steps at any time to disable such methods from working. So you might purchase a book thinking it will work on your Kindle when it does not. We have to pay the publisher as soon as you download the eBook, we can't refund you if this transfer method doesn't work.
It is also not clear whether such methods violate your Amazon Kindle terms of service, which might mean you could void your Kindle warranty by using such methods.
Our Kindle-compatible Multiformat eBooks are in unencrypted Mobipocket format and the Amazon Kindle documentation expressly allows those kinds of file to be used on the Kindle. However, the Amazon Kindle documentation specifies that encrypted Mobipocket eBooks cannot be used on the Kindle.
For these reasons, Fictionwise strongly discourages the use of any such methods, and we will provide no support for them. Fictionwise only supports our MultiFormat eBooks for use on Kindle, not our Secure (DRM) Mobipocket eBooks.
So you *can* use non-DRM'd ebooks, but there isn't a legal option for the DRM'd ebooks at Fictionwise. I suspect that has a serious affect on title selection
you CAN add new things, just not from amazon. One can add non-amazon content to the Kindle
-- D-23994, Muff#2613
Ah, there's still a lot of FUD going around on that. You can actually plug the Kindle into a USB port and it mounts just like any other flash drive, and you can load readable formats like .mobi and .txt with no interaction with Amazon. For PDF files you'd be out of luck, but as yet, the PDF conversion was never good enough for use anyway, in my opinion.
Please don't mod me redundant; I feel that if someone from Amazon sees this, they need to see multiple people saying it:
I too was planning on buying a Kindle, but will never do so if my ability to use it is at the whim of someone other than myself.
What use is a electronic reader if you can't add new books to read?
Honestly, I don't quite get the point either... I have a Kindle, and I have a bunch of stuff on it that didn't come from Amazon.com. Sure, it's more hassle to put things on it if you don't have a working Kindle account; you can't just pay the 10 cents each to email things directly to the device, and instead have to hook it up to the computer... but you can get legitimately free books from, say, baen.com and load them on to your heart's content. the Kindle will *read* a variety of formats, not just its own.
The most valid point the guy has is "what happened to the warranty?" Since the warranty is used by contacting Customer Service, and he no longer has that right, he can't get warranty service on his $350 electronic device, and that does suck. It could even be illegal.
But, come on, it is so NOT true that a Kindle becomes useless if you can't access the Kindle store. It's the other way around: the Kindle store is of no use if your Kindle doesn't work.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
1. The Kindle books will still work if you make your own backups.
2. The books on my Kindle do not have any DRM at all.
So, you don't have any point.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I agree also - I was looking forward to a Kindle as my next gadget purchase. I'm actually rather tired of physical books lately. For some reason hardcovers are not a standardized height meaning bookcases end up with a lot of wasted space. Why are they all over the place? I go on reading binges when time and work allow and it's way too easy to have a pile of books but no two are the same. Storage is a pain! I'd rather just have a good electronic reader.
I can only hope the success of the Kindle and the projects like Openmoko means an open source type will come along.
You can charge people with being a nuisance or loitering, but places open to the public must be open to the public with very little exception. All those signs that say "We reserve the right to refuse service..." are popular, but not only are they not legally enforceable, but they are actually illegal. [...] You must be breaking the law for a business open to the general public to refuse to serve you. Of course, as mentioned above, breaking the law can include public nuisance, and loitering.
Wow. You are so wrong my brain is melting.
A business can legally refuse service to anyone, unless the reason is race, color, religion, national origin, or disability. More information here and here. Feel free to google some more.
In short, refusing service to a customer who is breaking the terms of service is perfectly legal.
After reading that post and subsequent comments including the Amazon letter he received, there is no question in my mind: Amazon is guilty of theft.
The facts are these: He returned some items (that were not books or e-books) and had his account banned. Along with his purchase account, his Kindle account was also banned. If that meant he could continue using the books he already had, fine. But because of DRM, he cannot access the books he already purchased!
Ian says:
By making legitimately purchased information unavailable to him, Amazon is stealing (this is traditional theft -- taking something away from someone without the person's permission). If you do not agree with this, consider this scenario: Barnes & Noble is dissatisfied with your behaviour as a customer, so they ban you from all of their stores. And then they come to your house and take away all the books in your library because they claim you no longer have a right to access them.
Be very afraid of the cloud. Companies will be able to do anything they want with your information.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.