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

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

#21

Post by heelhook » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:44 PM UTC

I don't want to be the "yeah, same thing happened to me!" guy, but I had an awful experience with E*trade, back when their stock went down I decided to move some of my money to Bank of america... That wire took about three years to complete, only a few months ago they freed up my $100k account, which was not getting interests from them or anything, they could never tell me what had happened, they said "something" went wrong with the wire and so they locked my account.

Needless to say, I'm not doing business with them any time soon!

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

#22

Post by timwiseman » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:45 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #11

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.

Agreed. At the same time, it's a good warning that wisdom might be to backup your books in preparation for bugs.

In general when dealing with the cloud, I agree. But DRM often makes doing this very difficult by design.

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

#23

Post by moskie » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:45 PM UTC

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?

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

#24

Post by rmc » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:45 PM UTC

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 a Kindle 3, and I only use 3rd party content, i.e. none of the 100ish books on my kindle were bought from Amazon. None have DRM. I can read them fine.

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

#25

Post by jordan0day » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:48 PM UTC

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 don't doubt I'd probably have a very similar experience to yours with my device. It's entirely possible that I could use it as intended for the next ten years and never experience a single hiccup with the service.

I guess worrying about those edge cases just kind of comes naturally, perhaps a little too much personal experience with Murphy's Law?

Perhaps really my chief complaint boils down to the stereotypical issue with DRM: If I paid for a book, why do I need your permission to read it?

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

#26

Post by rmc » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:48 PM UTC

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…

I'm sure many of these same concerns apply to the Kindle

Not really. I have a Kindle 3, and have loads of non-DRM-ed, 3rd party books on it.

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

#27

Post by pyre » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:49 PM UTC

JonLim wrote: post #17

cultureulterior wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? You always call websites whenever you can't log into them? You don't allow for downtime at all? They are disputing the charges because amazon stole their content!

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 stretching to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt.

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

#28

Post by jordan0day » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:50 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #26

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…

I'm sure many of these same concerns apply to the Kindle Not really. I have a Kindle 3, and have loads of non-DRM-ed, 3rd party books on it.

I meant Kindle books, from Amazon.

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

#29

Post by pppp » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:51 PM UTC

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.

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

#30

Post by timwiseman » Wed, Nov 23, 2011, 6:52 PM UTC

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 also have been extremely happy with my kindle. The closest I have to a complaint is the limit on the number of devices that can be authorized for certain books, and even that is normally reasonable. The cloud based reader accessible through a browser also makes that restriction less painful (though I wish they would enable highlighting...)

But I still have concerns about the DRM. Amazon seems extremely stable, but things in tech move fast. Even if Amazon survives, I may eventually want to move to a completely different reader from a company that doesn't exist now, and the DRM will make it hard to take my library with me.

I love the cloud drive player Amazon rolled out for MP3s, but I have it redundantly backed up on 2 harddrives. With the Kindle content I don't have that option.