Slashdot Mirror
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.
This is just another reason why DRM is not a benefit to the consumer and why consumers should *not* support DRM.
So you are saying if I buy a lawn mower from Home Depot and then I go in the next day and streak the place and get banned, they should also have the right to re-possess the lawn mower I legally purchased?
How is this any different? He bought a kindle, he bought books for it, then did something totally unrelated Amazon did not like, and they essentially remotely deactivated his device.
This makes me wonder what would happen with my G1 if for some reason I lost access to my Google account. (You basically can't do anything on the phone without being signed in, though you can create a new account from the phone itself.)
I suspect I could just link it to another account and re-sync contacts, calendar, etc. But then there's the question of purchased apps. Are they linked to the phone, to the cellular plan, or to the Google account? It's something I hadn't thought about before.
register your Kindle's PID
How do you find your Kindle's PID when Amazon makes sites delete information about KindlePID?
If your account is flagged for returning shit, you're just dumb. Don't buy crap and then return it and expect to stay in a company's good graces for long. I think I speak for all people who ever retail when I say this to people who return more than 1 item every 6 months: Eat Shit And Die. You wouldn't abuse your friends and family like that, so why harrass stores and their employees, even if they're owned/employed by a soulless corperation. Something like 15% of items are returned (dollar amount perhaps), which significantly cuts into profits and drives up prices for everyone else. Fuck You.
/rant off.
i would kill myself before working retail again.
moox. for a new generation.
It's one thing to tell someone that they're no longer welcome to order anymore, but it's quite another to retroactively disable anything that they've previously purchased. That's the distinction.
Many people abuse the flexible Costco return policy. Some of these people get their memberships revoked. At no time does Costco come in and say that they can no longer use items they've already bought.
Titus Barik
BOOKS ARE CHEAP and they do not NEED an electronic delivery mechanism! I don't quite understand why on earth a product like the Kindle needs to exist.
Whats worst is that not only are books already cheap, but they're often CHEAPER in physical form than on the kindle. I was in the supermarket the other day and saw that they had Twilight as a mass market paperback. IIRC the price was $6.99 (cover - no store discount). The same darned book in eBook form, which is just a collection of bits costing many times less to reproduce than the book, is priced at $9.99. There is just something wrong with that. Plus, as a failsafe, books don't need a device that can break, or needs power, etc. Call me paranoid but with the current economic climate the world of "Mad Max" is looking like a possible eventuality, and the regular books will be useful far longer into that period than an ebook.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Like takedown notices have ever stopped information from getting out, before..
But Amazon's attempt to cover up KindlePID does signal Amazon's intent that owners of Kindle devices not buy DRM works from other providers.
If you're talking about periodicals or school textbooks then e-book readers make sense to me, but if you're purchasing a piece of literature that you're going to keep beyond next week, then I think e-books are more trouble than they're worth, especially if someone can arbitrarily decide that you shouldn't be allowed access to something you've already paid for, regardless of whether the person mentioned "should have made backup copies". I'd feel less strongly about this if there was no DRM involved, but as is, I say "no way".
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
My desire for a Kindle just dropped from "It's really cool and I am going to eventually have one!" to zero.
The main reason I have not cared for e-books is that I want ownership - I want to keep my books. Until now, I assumed I would with a Kindle, obviously not.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I'm unclear how the existence of non-existence of DRM on the Kindle makes any difference in this case. He can't buy from the Amazon store. Okay. If Amazon only sold un-DRMed ebooks, then he still wouldn't be able to buy from the store. Further, the Kindle doesn't just display books purchased from Amazon. Any non-DRM ebook can be read on the Kindle. Further, he says that he can still read his purchased books on his Kindle. The main thing I dislike about the situation is the fact that he can't move his DRMed books off of the Kindle (say, in a few years when he wants a new ebook reader).
From the slashdot summary: "and any Kindle subscriptions he's paid for stop working." Where does it say that in the article? (Or is the Slashdot submitter's dislike of DRM causing him to interpret this as another "bad DRM" story?)