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Amazon bans account – customer loses all Kindle books
April 7, 2009 | 10:36 am
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By Paul Biba
The following is an edited message from the MobileRead forums. It raises a good point about the ephemeral quality of DRMed ebooks. I like the author’s characterization of the Kindle as a service. You can read the full thread here, and thanks to Paul Durrant for the heads up.
I have been a loyal Amazon.com customer for many years, but today, I received an email stating that I have been banned from the site and my account has been closed, because I apparently have an extraordinary rate of requesting refunds due to a variety of factors. …
The ban from the main site is bad (and inexplicable) enough, but…
I have now discovered that I cannot manage my Kindle2 account (I can’t log into Amazon) or purchase any new content.
In effect, I now have a $359 brick, not covered under any warranty, not able to be used the way it was meant to be, not able to be returned (not that I even want to, I just want to keep reading!) …
But please let this be a lesson to all of us – when you buy a Kindle, you are really buying a service-
-and that service can be turned off at a whim.
Not cool at all.
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Comments:
The customer was banned because of their history of returning items. They stated that they had returned three items that were defective. This is not unusual. Many years ago, I had a retail account closed down because of my return history. Typically the retailer takes the return very nicely, and then bans you — this is the experience reported by this costumer.
The wrinkle is that the Kindle only allows DRM books (most recently releases) from Amazon. When they lock you out, you are left with a reader that only reads Gutenberg books and Baen books (plus a few small independents). You lose access to all of the Kindle books your previously bought and you can’t buy new ones. In addition, you have overpaid, since you can get a basic eink reader without Amazon access for $229 (Astak on sale from Fry’s).
This is another problem with DRM. You don’t really ‘own’ stuff you buy.
Michael
If I was on the fence about the Kindle before (which I wasn’t), I’d be off that fence like a shot now, and heading for more open devices. Why invest in a device that can be so easily bricked, depriving you of further use (or potentially, of the use of products you’ve already purchased) when you can get a device that reads multiple formats and is not tied so tightly to a restrictive service?
[Note that the original poster has had his amazon account reinstated according to a follow up comment]
However, and perhaps more relevantly, the problem here is that it is clear that you really only rent the stuff you have on your kindle. Combined with the Kindlepid.py actions this makes me extremely reluctant to buy anything non-physical from Amazon. Of course I can’t personally buy a Kindle since I’m not a resident of the USA but I’m quite certain that I now never ever will.
The Kindle needn’t become a brick. .Mobi ebooks can be purchased and loaded elsewhere, even if for whatever reason a Kindle owner ceases to remain an Amazon customer. The $9.99 boycotters have the same option.
And if push came to shove, if you’ve backed up your Kindle purchases they could be . . . opened, shall we say, so that they would once again be usable. Not necessarily legal, but then again, neither is saying “Thanks for buying all this stuff, we just won’t ever let you see any of it again!”
Mobi ebooks can be purchased but the kindle won’t let you read drm mobi books, you have to find drm free. Personally that’d be fine with me but some people are big on reading the bestsellers, and why shouldn’t they be? Also, the dictionaries for the readers are drm.
This is the main reason I bought a cybook instead of sony or amazon. That’s just too much power and trust to give someone for my money. They abuse their power to your detriment and it effects them zero.
I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that they ban a customer for returning defective products. How about they stop selling defective products and APOLOGIZE?? Isn’t that by far the most rational and decent thing?? Somebody please tell me what ever happened to customer service! This is so wrong and they have the power and apparently no concern for their customers so it doesn’t effect them at all. You’re just out of luck. Sounds like an excellent reason for me to avoid amazon.com forever.
Very jackboot, that action by Amazon.
One reason it is a Sony and not a Kindle winging my way by UPS today is I shall have no corporation looking over my shoulder while I read.
Sony is no angel in DRM matters clearly. But in seeing fit to lord these powers over its Kindle renters, Amazon is saying it wants a feudal relationship.
Good job Teleread in helping publicize this travesty.
Since this was an isolated incident and has since been rectified, the real issue is future access to purchased DRM content. I just can’t believe that a company with such a solid upper hand in the market would continue to shoot itself in the foot with things like three-month wait times, the text-to-speech reversal and now this.
It is mightily ironic that I will now be buying less stuff from Amazon because I am afraid I might lose my Amazon buying privileges.
But I want to keep my Kindle working, so I just can’t risk buying something expensive I might have to return.
I don’t think this is how Amazon intended it to work. But as long as the number and/or dollar value of returns that triggers banning is a secret, what else can I do?
Okay folks, where did you get the idea from that she returned only 3 due to a defect? It was stated that she had an extraodinary rate of returns for various reasons. I believe there’s more to this story than what is given here. And I am not a fan of the Kindle, though I do buy books from Amazon from time to time. When I read a book online, I tend to do so from a laptop or desktop. If I was (and I do plan on doing so) to purchase an extra device to read books electronically, it would be an iphone.
Okay folks, where did you get the idea that she returned only 3 items due to a defect? It was stated that she had an EXTRAORDINARY rate of returns for various reasons. I believe there’s more to this story than what is given here. I’m not a fan of the Kindle, though I do buy books from Amazon from time to time. When I read a book online, I tend to do so from a laptop or desktop. If I was (and I do plan on doing so) to purchase an extra device to read books electronically, it would be an iphone.
It’s me again. I’ve looked further into this story and discover 1) Ian is a he, not a she, and 2) His situation is not unique, nor unusal, as Amazon has banned other accounts due to returns (small or large), and that’s very unfair. Makes me think twice about purchasing anything from them.
Sorry Ian – that was crappy of Amazon. I hope that this story hits the general mainstream media.
I think Amazon is counting on nobody finding out about the people they ban for stupid reasons. And it’s extremely ridiculous to ban someone for returning defective products. That is pure greed on their part. The customer should keep the defective product and be glad they have the ability to purchase more.
Yeah, if it hit the evening news that’d get Amazon’s attention. I think these companies get very powerful and just don’t care. We all help them when we either don’t spread the word, or continue buying there even though we’ve been warned. You want to change something, you get their attention by negatively affecting their bottom line.
Go ahead Christine. You know you’re telling the truth.
May you please elaborate with us what were the items you had to return and why? and how much they cost?
I’m really scared now because since i got the kindle i have been buying books like mad. I live abroad, its the easiest way for me than to wait for shipping and high shipping costs abroad…
I was about to buy a Kindle, but in doing my ‘due diligence’ I came across this discussion. Frankly, even if the situation has been resolved, I won’t be buying the Kindle. I don’t like companies that behave in this manner and I don’t like getting locked into proprietary products. I’ll seek or wait for a better instantiation of this technology.
Far be it from me to talk anyone into using a proprietary, closed-format reader, but I think it’s worth noting that we’ve never heard of this happening before or since apart from this one time, and it took a pretty specific set of conditions to trigger it.
A much better reason to bypass the Kindle is the “1984″ thing, and (Amazon sez) even that is unlikely to happen again.
Look what is the big fuss. I have a Kindle and I Love it. AND YOU DON’T NEED AMAZON. Convert any document to a TXT file and place it in the right folder and Wala your Book is on your Kindle. I have not found any situation that this does not work. so Relax People and Enjoy the Reading.
As a published author on Amazon.com, I find that I get a huge rate of returns AFTER the book is read because people are too cheap to actually honor the purchase. amazon should ban people who abuse that service, because we have to eat too! I think the rate of returns has to be extrodinary before amazon takes action because out of three thousand books I sold this month I had ninety five returned. No complaints of any kind with them. Therefore they were dishonest in buying the item, speed reading it and returning them. I hope Amazon tightens up on this somehow because some people do abuse it. To the others that do it honestly, they wouldn’t be banned.
Just my side of the story.
95 out of 3,000 ? So you had 3.16% returned ? What exactly is the problem and what are you complaining about ? Did it cost you anything ? Did you ever consider that it is the very fact that people CAR return a title that causes them to feel more free to buy and that is why you sold so many ? I am wondering who exactly is the ‘cheap’ one.
Some people are NEVER happy !!
I never said I was unhappy. You missed my point. I said the dishonest people that read a book and return it continuously wreck it for the honest people. Forget the conversation man, you are twisting the issue.
Oh for goodness sakes no matter which way you read it you certainly weren’t happy .. no offence intended !
Firstly it was only 3.16% ! and secondly you have no idea if they read it and returned it at all ! They may have read two chapters and didn’t like it and felt that since Amazon offer them the return option they may as well use it. They may also be on very low income. Some may even by Amazon site errors where the buyer bought the wrong title by mistake. It could be anything.
uh-huh, thanks for the math.