Posts Tagged ‘ Kindle ’

3 Strikes for Amazon! (but no, they’re not out)

July 21st, 2009. By AbiK

It is baseball season, so it’s fitting—if not welcome over at Amazon—that the company’s had 3 strikes in the last week or so. No, not those kind of strikes where employees walk out and all. These strikes have been more of the strike-to-the-ego sort.

Strike 1

We posted in last week’s Week Adjourned column that Amazon was under fire for its cracking Kindle screens. As of Friday, there were a few reports surfacing on the net that Amazon would replace the cracked screens without charging the $200 repair fee; this week the news is definitely out with numerous sites, including tech.yahoo.com and pcworld.com, reporting Amazon’s about-face.

Strike 2

Next, Amazon had to “retrieve” two George Orwell classics—1984 and Big Brother—from Kindles whose owners had rightfully purchased the books. Seems the books came via a company that didn’t quite have the rights to sell the books. Little red flag to Amazon’s buyers, no? Be that as it may, the class action that Amazon now faces over the situation is reported to also claim that this little mishap devalues the Kindle. Why? Because Kindle owners feel part of the “value” in owning a Kindle and buying books for it is that you can keep the books forever. Or maybe just not anything Orwellian. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Amazon, Kindle
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