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Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

consumerist.com

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Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#31

Post by jordan0day »

zdw wrote: post #14
jordan0day wrote: post #6

I just received a Barnes & Noble "Nook SimpleTouch" (the basic, e-ink screen one), and while I like it, this sort of thing has me very worried about using most of its (limited set of) features. That is, while the Nook has something like 1 gb of internal storage for books, about 75% is reserved for content you have to purchase through Barnes & Noble. That leaves about 230 mb for your own files. (The Nook does feature…

Anyone know if the Kobo has similar issues? I've totally written off the Kindle because of similar 3rd party content issues - anyone have first hand experience with the Nook or Kobo when used with ePub (mainly) and PDF (rarely) files?

As far as I can tell, the Nook is perfectly fine with non-DRM'd 3rd-party EPUB's and PDF's (the only limitation being the amount of internal storage on the device allotted for 3rd-party stuff).

I have no idea if it works with DRM'd 3rd-party content, though.

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#32

Post by wrs »

jordan0day wrote: post #6

I just received a Barnes & Noble "Nook SimpleTouch" (the basic, e-ink screen one), and while I like it, this sort of thing has me very worried about using most of its (limited set of) features. That is, while the Nook has something like 1 gb of internal storage for books, about 75% is reserved for content you have to purchase through Barnes & Noble. That leaves about 230 mb for your own files. (The Nook does feature…

> what guarantees do I have that I can still read those books if B&N goes under

As the MSN Music shutdown (and others) demonstrated, quite possibly none at all. That's how DRM works.

There's no DRM media allowed in my house. I plan to live a lot longer than most companies' digital media divisions will!

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#33

Post by zotz »

rickmb wrote: post #4

Buying DRM-ed content is a contradiction in terms. Period. It should be made illegal for sellers to pretend this constitutes the purchase of the content itself. Call it a lease, call it a service, but stop scamming consumers.

If they called it Digital Permissions/Privileges Management, sales would suffer and we all know that's worse than the winds of Hell.

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#34

Post by jxi »

JonLim wrote: post #9
jordan0day wrote: post #6

I just received a Barnes & Noble "Nook SimpleTouch" (the basic, e-ink screen one), and while I like it, this sort of thing has me very worried about using most of its (limited set of) features. That is, while the Nook has something like 1 gb of internal storage for books, about 75% is reserved for content you have to purchase through Barnes & Noble. That leaves about 230 mb for your own files. (The Nook does feature…

To be 100% honest, I've bene nothing but very very happy with my Kindle. Purchased a book by accident? Refund instantly or done within 5 minutes. Switching devices? No problemo, pages are synced up to the last page you read. Wiping your device? All your books are online and available for download. This seems like a fringe case that I'm not too worried about. I have a full purchase history on Amazon.com and if anythin…

I've had the opposite experience as you. While the kindle is a very sexy device, all it really does well is the reading part. However, pretty much every e-reader does that part well.

The thing I hate most though is the whole Kindle experience. Buying e-books from Amazon is kind of scammy since there's no confirmation page when you buy books and there's no way to turn off one-click for kindle books. Also, I wasn't able to find where to refund the book at all when I clicked "buy" thinking that there would be a confirmation page.

Also, the syncing is kinda broken because if you click a link in the book and end up in the appendix, there's no easy way to reset the furthest page read. Finally, epub is such a "free-ing" format since I can purchase books from Google books as well. Sync is just a minor convenience since e-book sellers will usually let you re-download the book anyway if you've purchased it.

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#35

Post by [deleted] »

heelhook wrote: post #19
jordan0day wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a sufficiently large organization such that I'm sure this sort of thing actually happens more often than you think. By the tone of your comment, I'm assuming the "part of the story we're not hearing" involves the customer doing something wrong, rather than Amazon? If that's the case, I can't really think of what that thing might be that would give Amazon the right to lock this guy out? Also, why would he br…

Not to take anyone's side, since I don't know the details, but maybe they suspected the account was using an stolen CC? I know companies tend to aggressively protect credit card holders (specially since rollbacks are so expensive). I'm sure amazon must be the target of stolen credit cards consistently. That said, regardless of their size, they should expedite this type of check, specially for accounts that are not ne…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#36

Post by dangrossman »

matdwyer wrote: post #12

This is how you "get things done" - complain online to get the most PR you can, the company finally listens, and will fix it within 24 hours. It's too bad it has to come to that.

Except you need to do it before charging back the past 6 months of purchases from the store. I doubt even going up a few levels of management can get that account unlocked after that. Even very big retailers have to treat chargebacks as an attack on their very ability to do business, since riding the 1% limit can be so hard. He's proven he's not a customer they can take money from, no matter the facts of the situation.

Once I read that line, my first thought was "chances are his account was locked by the fraud/risk department".

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#37

Post by nobody314159265 »

zdw wrote: post #14
jordan0day wrote: post #6

I just received a Barnes & Noble "Nook SimpleTouch" (the basic, e-ink screen one), and while I like it, this sort of thing has me very worried about using most of its (limited set of) features. That is, while the Nook has something like 1 gb of internal storage for books, about 75% is reserved for content you have to purchase through Barnes & Noble. That leaves about 230 mb for your own files. (The Nook does feature…

Anyone know if the Kobo has similar issues? I've totally written off the Kindle because of similar 3rd party content issues - anyone have first hand experience with the Nook or Kobo when used with ePub (mainly) and PDF (rarely) files?

I have the original no-wifi cheap kobo, it only has free content on it.

I connected it the PC and and simply copied epub and pdf to it using calibre. It comes with 100 free books that you can erase, none of the memory is reserved (except for the OS)

ePub works perfectly.

pdf is a little limited in range of zoom, for technical books I convert to epub with calibre and download that.

The only downside of the Kobo - it takes a long time to boot up if it has fully shutdown. Then once it has started it takes a long time to open books.

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#38

Post by estel »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #8

This, of course, is the difference between ownership and permission-to-use.

No ebook license (or any other "virtual" good) will ever have a license that confers 'ownership'.

A license can be more flexible and allow free transfer, copying and backup; but I don't think the law allows for a concept of the ownership of trivially duplicable data.

Re: Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs

#40

Post by dangrossman »

moskie wrote: post #23

Is it safe to assume that eBooks will eventually go through a similar lifecycle as mp3s? Where, at first, publishers force DRM on items sold, but eventually give in because of customer complaints and demands regarding stuff like what happened in this article?

I hope so, though what a waste of money for the people that bought in early. I spent way too much money legally purchasing music during the DRM days... I can't play any of those WMA files anymore since the license servers to authenticate my "rights" are no longer online.
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