Amazon Puts Your $1000 Kindle Library 'On Hold,' Apologizes, Shrugs • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by JonLim » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:44 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #27

JonLim wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I call websites whenever my content that I paid for is broken or inaccessible. Not to mention they already did it once, and were told to wait 24 hours, but instead they waited a month? I understand why they're disputing charges, but that seems silly if they haven't made some concerted effort to figure out what's going on. At least that's my take on it.

I think that it's silly to blame the user because they waited a month. You have no idea what was going on in that person's life to cause them to wait that long. You also don't know that person's personality. Maybe they are a major procrastinator. Maybe they are phone phobic. To say that the person was obviously in the wrong/doing something shady/to blame just because of how long they waited seems like you're really s…

Didn't say they were obviously wrong, just that something feels missing.

However, not sure how it's silly to blame a user if they waited a month. Personal issue? Fine. But procrastinator and phone phobic aren't really excuses for this. If you're really concerned about your Kindle (I would be VERY concerned if it were more than a day.) then I would do almost anything in my power to fix it.

Wait a month? But that's a whole month of me not reading my books!

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

#52

Post by JonLim » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:45 PM UTC

jxi wrote: post #34

JonLim wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abl…

When you purchase a book on your Kindle, you get taken to a page saying you bought the book.

There's a link for "Made a mistake?" which I clicked once, thinking I would get a confirmation page as well, and the refund was instantaneous.

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

#53

Post by cube13 » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:49 PM UTC

matdwyer wrote: post #49

dangrossman wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 situatio…

Chargebacks are not a quick process (at least in my business). It would take well over 1-2 months before the chargeback was completed, and with the volume Amazon likely has to deal with I doubt they are tied to his account already?

That's probably the reason that it's still locked. If he initiated a chargeback, Amazon should put a hold on his account while the entire process gets completed.

Chargebacks are supposed to be a last resort consumer tool, when every other option has been exhausted.

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

#54

Post by cjdavis » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:52 PM UTC

JonLim wrote: post #7

notatoad wrote: post #5

i feel like there's a part of this story that we're not hearing. given amazon's excellent customer service reputation (including my own experiences) it's hard for me to believe that this could happen without there being a reason.

I'm inclined to agree. My own anecdotal experiences with Amazon customer service aside, something feels amiss about this whole situation. Why did they not call/email Amazon after a full 24 hours had gone by? Why are they disputing Amazon charges to their credit cards? I just feel like something is wrong here.

The letter clearly states he has contacted every Amazon support option he knows of:

  I have filed a complaint with the BBB, emailed everyone I
  could at Amazon, called the Customer Service Line, the
  Kindle "Executive" support line, and Corporate. I have 
  been apologized to by everyone I have spoken to and been 
  told that they have never seen this situation before.
 
  None of them can tell me if I will ever receive the 
  content I have paid for.

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

#55

Post by ajross » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:54 PM UTC

azov wrote: post #48

What happened to the books on his device? $1000 worth of books should easily fit on one Kindle, even if he can't login to his account - how did he get locked out of his content? Did Amazon remotely wipe out his purchases? Did he buy books on site and never synced them? Does he have access to them from some other app or device, but can't sync a new one? Is he using a device at all? Is he using Kindle for the Web? Or,…

It's that an irrelevant technicality though? Say he reads only on his phone, and lost it. Does that make the case more or less important? What if some nice person buys him physical copies to replace the DRM'd ones? Does that get Amazon off the hook?

There's a principle here. The specifics aren't really the point.

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

#56

Post by nekojima » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:54 PM UTC

jordan0day wrote: post #16

notatoad wrote: post #5

i feel like there's a part of this story that we're not hearing. given amazon's excellent customer service reputation (including my own experiences) it's hard for me to believe that this could happen without there being a reason.

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…

I led a problem resolution team at a large company. If we ever knowingly received three calls from any client for the same problem (through any method of client contact source), or the complaint was vocal or serious enough on the first call (or first identifiable call), the incident would be forwarded to us and we'd deal with it directly. Rarely did the most complex issue take more than a day or two to resolve. On occasion it took a week or two if it was especially complex, but we'd contact the client directly and offer to give them a daily update so they'd know what was going on.

I'd be quite surprised if Amazon didn't have a similar team, even if just a dozen or two staff, if they are experienced, that's all that's usually required. The savings lost to poor public relations, and improved customer relations, easily make up for the cost of the team.

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

#57

Post by kmfrk » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 7:54 PM UTC

absconditus wrote: post #13

kmfrk wrote: post #2

Paging all e-book sellers, this is a chance to get great publicity for the one-time-only price of $1,000.

I do not believe that any other e-book seller has the selection that Amazon does. It would be terribly embarrassing if some seller tried to use this for PR and then realized that they do not have some of the titles.

I don't really subscribe to your argument in a cloud-based market where - to me - the biggest looming threat is to lose access to all your data.

There was another incident (Amazon again) where they lost a person's annotations for the Jobs biography in a software update[1]. Amazon seem to be botching the cloud aspect of e-books, and while their selection is orders of magnitude better than iBooks in my country (because I can buy from Amazon.com), the reason I buy e-books in the first place is because of what the cloud offers - with marginalia/annotations being the best selling point over dead-tree books.

Annotating e-books on the Kindle app on iOS is also a ridiculous pain in the ass, but that's for another time. I love the selection Amazon has, especially the self-published articles from bloggers, Ars Technica, newspapers or magazines and such, but the way Apple keeps screwing these things up, I plan on choosing the iBooks version, if available. I honestly think I might have thrown my phone against the wall, if all my Isaacson biography annotations had been wiped.

But that's just me as one customer. I am sure that some people have the priorities you do, but I wouldn't exactly predict an unequivocal PR failure. :)

[1]: http://mjtsai.com/blog/2011/11/21/kindle-annotations-lost-in...

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

#58

Post by cube13 » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 8:07 PM UTC

nekojima wrote: post #56

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…

I led a problem resolution team at a large company. If we ever knowingly received three calls from any client for the same problem (through any method of client contact source), or the complaint was vocal or serious enough on the first call (or first identifiable call), the incident would be forwarded to us and we'd deal with it directly. Rarely did the most complex issue take more than a day or two to resolve. On oc…

Out of curiosity, what would you do if the client got to this point, and your team determined that it was a fraudulent claim?

Obviously, if it's legitimate, you would have the ability to fix the issue right away. However, what if there were enough red flags that it didn't seem entirely right?

Not saying that this is the case either way, but I'm curious what the standard procedure is in that case.

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

#59

Post by felipemnoa » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 8:08 PM UTC

timwiseman wrote: post #41

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?

That is possible and also my hope. Unfortunately, I think there are a number of differences that will make that harder with ebooks than regular books. Most significantly, people consume the media different. Excluding a few reference books and the Bible, I tend to read a book once and then I am done with it, and I think most people are like that. Even people who reread books only do it a few times with some spacing in…

>>I tend to read a book once and then I am done with it

This may be true for novels, but science, engineering and math books are usually used for a long, long time. I still have all of mine for reference and every once in a while I do come back to many of them.

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

#60

Post by cdmoyer » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 8:14 PM UTC

pppp wrote: post #29

Whenever I buy a book from Amazon, the first thing I do immediately after the purchase is strip the DRM and store a copy of the unprotected .mobi file. I'm concerned about Amazon's new announced ebook format that I'll lose the ability to do this. If and when that happens, I won't purchase anymore books from them.

I was always very religious about backing up my music purchases, and generally removing the DRM, but had never done so with eBooks.

Your comment (and this article) just inspired me to figure out how to do this, and backup all me eBooks in a DRM-free format. Turns out, it was pretty painless.