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Lose Your Amazon Account and Your Kindle Dies

Posted by timothy on from the just-give-us-the-money-and-nobody-gets-hurt dept.

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.

13 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Just another reason to not support DRM by TheLinuxSRC · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is just another reason why DRM is not a benefit to the consumer and why consumers should *not* support DRM.

    1. Re:Just another reason to not support DRM by pleappleappleap · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Indeed. I was planning on buying a Kindle (I read a LOT), but now I'm not going to. This is inexcusable, even if the complainant in the thread is in the wrong.

    2. Re:Just another reason to not support DRM by TheLinuxSRC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can you show me somewhere that the guy was being a dick? He returned some items. Apparently there is an unwritten policy at Amazon that if you return X number of high-ticket items (regardless of whether the CS rep says to do so or not) you are banned. No warning, nothing - just banned.

      Regardless there is no reason his Kindle should be effectively bricked. Yes, he can use the content he has already purchased, however he can never (legally) obtain any new content for that Kindle; a "feature" designed into the Kindle by Amazon. This sounds like a fundamental problem with DRM to me. Where do we draw the line? Also, not only can he not purchase new content, he cannot even use the warranty on the Kindle should he need to. All at the whim of Amazon.

      As far as karma goes, mine is excellent and I don't need it. Why don't you quit being an asshat and go read the article?

    3. Re:Just another reason to not support DRM by mikec · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not to defend Amazon, you have misstated the situation. They books he bought are still on his Kindle and still readable. He can't buy any new ones, and his subscriptions are canceled -- meaning he doesn't pay for them, and he doesn't receive them. The stuff he *bought* is all still there.

    4. Re:Just another reason to not support DRM by commodore64_love · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're right - it's not a DRM problem.

      It's a rental problem wherein our corporate overlords are trying to convince us we are "buying" books when it fact we are only renting them, until the corporation decides to block access to the servers (or the company goes out-of-business). Now there's nothing wrong with renting, but the overlords should be honest about it, and the rental rate should be lower than if I bought the physical book. In most cases, neither is true.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    5. Re:Just another reason to not support DRM by Culture20 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Not Entirely True by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative
    Maybe he should have followed the link of the first reply's signature? From that site:

    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.
  3. A right to do what? by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:A right to do what? by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, because the stuff you bought at Costco will still work, even if your membership is canceled.

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    2. Re:A right to do what? by MBGMorden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      On the third hand, if your ebooks are already on the Kindle they cannot be removed by Amazon. So they're removing the privilege of buying more from them. Oh no!

      But DRM ensures that just because you have a file doesn't mean that you can use it. Depending on the scheme (I have the Kindle Software for my iPod Touch but haven't used it so I'm not really familiar with it), losing your account can make the file you purchased stop working. DRM applied to subscription music services works that way (ie, if you cancel your service the music that you downloaded might still be on your computer, but it won't play), but in those cases it was understood that it was a SUBSCRIPTION service and losing access was to be expected. In this case it appears that Amazon cut him off from using PURCHASED content. That IS an "oh no" situation.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    3. Re:A right to do what? by HiThere · · Score: 5, Interesting

      However note that they COULD deactivate books he had previously purchased. That means that in the future they could do it intentionally for whatever reason suited them at the time.

      In the past week they have demonstrated the ability to censor a large swath of publications and now to deactivate the right to read already purchased works. I.e., they have intentionally built the capabilities to do such things.

      You can think whatever you want about the particular events that caused these capabilities to become evident, but they WERE revealed. Publicly.

      Perhaps these two times were accidents. Next time it might not be. Next time it might be removing the ability to either read or purchase politically inconvenient items. Or religiously inconvenient. Or commercially. Or any other reason that suited them.

      Decide for yourself if you want to trust a company that has intentionally implemented such capabilities. It's up to you. But if they've built the capability don't be surprised if they use it.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  4. Read through his posts... by PrimalChrome · · Score: 5, Interesting

    He clearly states that he regularly returns big ticket items because they're 'defective'. I know a number of people that utilize this same exploit on a regular basis. They only shop at places with excellent return policies. They order big ticket items and when they realize they maxxed their CC or decide the novelty has worn off, they return them because suddenly they notice a defect. Most of the time this defect was either imaginary or simply the result of several days/weeks of playtime.

    As this becomes a hit to company profits, they will have to be much more careful on returns....making it much harder on those of us with valid returns. Too bad they reinstated his account.

  5. KindlePID deletion by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    register your Kindle's PID

    How do you find your Kindle's PID when Amazon makes sites delete information about KindlePID?