Jeff Bezos - An Apology from Amazon

Jeff Bezos posted to the Kindle Community Discussions forum a simple but eloquently spare apology with no excuses for the remote deletions that understandably caused Amazon a tremendous loss of trust in one week for the clueless handling of a digital rights management situation which involved having inadvertently sold illegally-published books (uploaded by the trusted Mobile Reference folks who have done such good work on public domain works) and deciding to give refunds while erasing the files from servers and from network client Kindles without warning to customers who had paid for the books.

The wording is so effective, to my mind, that this will go a long way toward restoring a good bit of the trust they've had from long-time customers.

For my money, it was a classy statement, not put out to the world through a press release but directly to the Kindle community itself. Excellent move.

To check whether it was officially from Amazon, I saw that management had caused the two sticky topics at the top of that forum to become unsticky at the top - one was a Customer Service Announcement thread and the other was a Kindle FAQ given sticky status long ago for customers to help other customers.  Only management has the rights to change those placements and I think it was possibly inadvertent while placing his announcement post there:

" Initial post: Jul 23, 2009 12:16 PM PDT
Jeffrey P. Bezos says:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com "

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Amazon's sharing policies confuse its own reps - Update

UPDATES added near the bottom Original posting 7/17/09 - 10:16 AM - It was a system error, now being "fixed" per staff.

The Net has seen some heated writing about Amazon's DRM (Digital-Rights-Management) policies in that a first-tier customer service representative had told a customer-blogger that there was a limit as to how often we can re-download an Amazon-purchased book when the Amazon ads blare that a Kindle owner will be able to re-download a book at no added cost anytime the book is needed again when the customer has deleted it to save space.  Also re-downloaded with the book would be your highlighting and notes if you allowed Amazon to back them up.

The actual quantity limitation by Amazon is on the number of devices on which one Amazon-purchased book can be be simultaneously accessed under one person's account.  The limit that Kindle forum participants are used to mentioning to new members is "up to 6 devices," usually meaning Kindles or Kindle-compatible units like the iPhone and iPod that use the Kindle App.

Here's the Amazon FAQ statement in reply to the question: "How many Kindles can I use to access titles in my library?"

Most books and other non-subscription items you purchase from the Kindle store may be simultaneously accessed for your personal use on to [sic] up to six Kindles (or Kindle compatible devices) [emphasis mine] registered to your Amazon.com account.

If you reach the device limit and wish to replace one of your current devices with a new one, you must first deregister and delete the content from the device you wish to replace before you can access the content in question from your new device.  Please see the "Registering Your Kindle" section of our Managing Your Kindle Settings Help page to learn how to register/deregister your Kindle.  There is no limit on the number of times a title can be downloaded to a registered device.  [Emphasis mine.]

Subscription content can only be downloaded to one Kindle at a time, and only the seven most recent issues will be available for redownload from your Kindle or from the Manage Your Kindle page. '

  My own addition to Amazon's statement is that you don't really have to "deregister" a Kindle to do this -- you just have to Remove or Delete the book from that Kindle.  I've done this many times as I have many Kindles so that I can write with first-hand knowledge of the models.

There's now an Amazon forum thread about the finding that those who use Amazon's self-publishing books feature ('DTP' or Digital Text platform) have wording in their product-info areas that the number of digital devices able to share the book simultaneously is '5' rather than '6'... that's been confirmed by a few Kindle book authors.

It's possible that an error was made when placing this info with the DTP books and that someone meant to put "up to 5 other devices" (Bufo Calvin is asking Amazon about this), but maybe Amazon, which is the "Publisher" in those cases, wanted to have a lower device count for those, but that would be very strange and a confusing inconsistency it really doesn't need.

Karen of Books on the Knob also points out that Wiley had a limit of 4 devices months ago, apparently mentioned in the product description.

 She reminds forum readers that we can download a book "hundreds of times (costing Amazon 12 cents or more, each time)" so is puzzled (as are any of us) why Amazon, as 'Publisher' would choose 5 devices for authors who publish under Amazon's DTP publishing area.  Perplexing, but she also notes that it's been evident that most customers don't appear to care that much that they might be able to share books with only 4 other Kindles under their accounts.

---

UPDATE 7/18/09 - see Karen's update in her comment to this post.  This seemed to have been an error on the part of a staffer who may have posted the number without authorization.

UPDATE 7/18/09 #2 - Here is the forum page on which the Amazon staffer ("dtpadmin") responds to Bufo Calvin's question about the 5-device limit:

" Hello,

We have identified an error in our system. We are fixing the problem to remove the device limit for DTP titles. We apologize for this error.

Thanks!"

---

I find that most people just want to be able to read a book.  The ability of a family or very good friends to share books on the same account paid for by one of them is considered a nice feature.

But Amazon has to get clearer about the policies, if nothing else, and wiser about them if they would keep a better focus on the customer experience.  I enjoyed a description of the Kindle the other day as a "vending machine" for products Amazon needs to sell us.  The long-term relationship needs more clarity and less fear that the customers want to steal books.  Most of us have had very good experiences with Amazon's customer service but there needs to be a way to give all the customer service representatives the same policy information and to place in the online-support areas more detailed and consistent information.

Amazon is a company that seems to have a lot on the plate.

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Amazon drops Kindle 2 price to $299 as of today

The Kindle 2 price was dropped by Amazon from $360 to $299 today.

UPDATE 7/8/09 - 11:32 PM at bottom of this article cites various statements about the reason for the price change, which is not short-term.

I checked the comments areas in a few places, and people who just recently bought Kindle 2s (within the last 30 days, since one can return a Kindle within 30 days for a refund anyway if not interested in keeping it) are being given $60 refunds when they request one.

The phone number for Kindle customer service is 866-321-8851.

This puts the price close to or even below competitor 5" to 6" models just coming out this month without the annotation, inline-dictionary, search, and 24/7 wireless features.

I haven't seen an Amazon statement yet but will write more when I see more. [See later updates below.]

UPDATE - July 8, 2009, 6:02 PM (Original posting at 5:18 PM)
I have seen blogs again repeating the erroneous "DRM" issue* report that made the blog rounds a few weeks ago, based on a conversation with a first-tier customer service rep that there is a limit on the number of times a book purchased from Amazon can be downloaded.  The customer service representative's information was wrong. The limitations policy, readable at the Kindle Amazon support pages states

"
[Q]  How many Kindles can I use to access titles in my library?

[A]  Most books and other non-subscription items you purchase from the Kindle store may be simultaneously accessed for your personal use on to up to six Kindles (or Kindle compatible devices) registered to your Amazon.com account.

If you reach the device limit and wish to replace one of your current devices with a new one, you must first deregister and delete the content from the device you wish to replace before you can access the content in question from your new device. Please see the "Registering Your Kindle" section of our Managing Your Kindle Settings Help page to learn how to register/deregister your Kindle.  There is no limit on the number of times a title can be downloaded to a registered device.

Subscription content can only be downloaded to one Kindle at a time, and only the seven most recent issues will be available for redownload from your Kindle or from the Manage Your Kindle page.
"

This policy has essentially allowed up to 6 Kindles belonging to one account holder, to share a book. The devices sharing include a non-Kindle device such as the iPhone or iPod.  The word "most" allows for exceptions but in a year of participation in many Amazon Kindle forum, the only time I've seen customers actually coming up against the 6-device limit was when defective Kindles returned still had a license registered by Amazon for it and these were removed upon request by the customer.  I have said that Amazon should automate the license removal on any returned Kindles.  Of course, families with many Kindle devices sharing an account will run up against the 6-device limit more readily than one person will.

With periodicals and subscriptions, there is a limit of 1 device at a time rather than 6 and there is a time limit by agreement with periodical publishers on when Amazon is allowed to keep the old issues redownloadable (or successfully transferrable).
  One cannot download issues older than that time from your Amazon Kindle management area nor move an older issue from an older Kindle to a newer one, which I have found the one real 'DRM' issue in that you certainly don't 'own' your magazine issue if it's older than 7 or so issues and you want it to be displayed on a newer Kindle you bought when you no longer have the older Kindle.  Because Amazon has made no Amazon procedure possible to change the device ID given a magazine/newspaper license, it can't be displayed on the new device (without resorting to cyberspace utilities that can remove the device-ID field info, information that of course Amazon strongly discourages forums or blogs from linking to, as copyright concerns are an issue, but if anything should happen to Amazon, at least we know there are workarounds).

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UPDATE - 7/8/09 - 11:25 PM
The NY Times blog gave this reason for Amazon's decision to drop the price on the Kindle 2.

In an e-mail message, Andrew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, said the company was passing on savings to consumers from the increasing volume of Kindle sales and the decreasing costs to manufacture the digital reading device.

Amazon’s jumbo-size Kindle DX, which it introduced in May, remains $489 and is currently out of stock on the site.

AP reporter Rachel Metz quoted Amazon's spokeswoman Cynthia Portugal:

Amazon spokeswoman Cinthia Portugal said the price cut, a classic move in electronics marketing, is not just a short-term promotion.

"We've been able to increase the volume of Kindles we're manufacturing and decrease the cost of doing so," Portugal said.

ThinkEquity analyst Ed Weller opined for AP that

[The $299 price] "feels like a much hotter price" than $359.

"They'll sell more of them, and they'll sell more books," he said. He doesn't expect Amazon to follow the Kindle price cut by raising digital book prices.

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