Fyi for anyone reading, it is very easy to break DRM on old kindle purchases. I think they rolled out new DRM for things published this year and it may be harder but still possible. I would encourage anyone here who has a kindle library to back up their purchases.

A friend of mine received a double shipment for a $300 order. Being honest, he contacted customer service to arrange a return. Everything seemed fine until a few days later when he noticed they had also refunded his original payment. He reached out again to let them know, and they said they’d just recharge his card. Apparently, that transaction failed (no clear reason why), and without any warning, they banned his account, wiping out his entire Kindle library in the process. Amazon works wonderfully right up until it fails spectacularly.

That's the point of DRM-free ebooks though, isn't it? You download them and keep them safe so if the provider decides to cut access to your account, you remain in possession of the goods.

So the correct advice would be to avoid anyone buying DRM-encumbered digital property - the same as RMS has been making for who knows how long!

Banning long-time customers in otherwise good-standing for a mistake they made years ago, which would already be settled financially and such a minor cost is wild.

I can imagine something like this has happened to almost everyone.

So much for being the world’s most customer-centric company. That mission is dead.

They failed to deliver a Pixel phone to me - they never even tried to deliver it and the status said "permanent delivery failure" so I assumed they'd automatically refund me.

Fast forward a few months, I never received a refund and they claim they have no record any more. I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...

(if anyone from Amazon is reading this, my email is in my bio!)

They screwed me in a different way. I simply didn't log into Amazon for a couple years as I've tried to minimize my use of Amazon. When I went to log in, they locked my account without any way to unlock it. Talking with support multiple times did nothing. Now all my digital purchases are gone.

Edit: If anyone knows a way to get them to unlock the account, I'd appreciate it. They won't issue a password reset or anything similar, which seems ridiculous considering they never claimed fraud. Simply that it had been too long since I logged in.

I saw the writing on the wall when they recently removed the facility to download your own books. I downloaded all of them, removed the DRM with Calibre, and now obtain e-books through other sources.

What is that you say? Stallman was right again?

https://stallman.org/amazon.html

I'm also particularly skeptical of Amazon because our Kindle Direct Publishing account was banned also for no reason. They said something about me having had a previous account before, but I'm not sure that was true and I think it was a very extreme measure. We were actually selling books at the time until we got banned. They obviously also "forgot" to pay out the most recent month.

> They also remotely wiped my Kindle

I wish the CFAA were used to go after people like whoever at Amazon was responsible for that, instead of people like Aaron Swartz.

I buy all my ebooks. I search DRM free, if there is DRM only I'll buy it the cheapest I can then download it from Annas Archive. I like to support authors but I need to own what I buy.

Unfortunately bad press is likely going to be the only thing to give you your account back. You should write a blog post and let the internet and the media do its magic

Damn that is scary. I’ve been reading on Kindle since 2017, I have about 200 books on there.

I doubt I would re-read many of them, but my partner is still going through some of them (with the family library thing).

I’d be pissed if it got wiped.

I have 5 kindles at home and they're all collecting dusts along with some Alexa and Echo devices, the only thing I need Amazon for is its ecommerce shopping site. The phone just replaces all those gadgets and it probably has nothing to do with Amazon. Still it's a nice move to support ePub and PDFs on kindles.

I work at Amazon and can escalate this if you're interested. Let me know the order ID and I'll see what I can do.

The only reason for a recent review (like with all the recently banned Facebook accounts from 2009) is firing up AI tools that didn't exist 5 years ago.

> As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books.

Can't you file a suit in a small claims court?

Yeah, welcome to tech. Don't get me wrong, I sympathize completely with you. It's an outrage. But it's incredible that Every. Single. One. of these companies has terrible automation with no ability to file a ticket for a human to look at it

Facebook is marginally worse than the others because Facebook left you with no way to actually contact the friends you accrued https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433

Amazon used to be really customer centric 5-10 years ago, I remember once I ordered a physical book which was late in delivery and I urgently needed that book, so they gave me a free kindle edition till the book got delivered.

That is truly insane - sorry that you’re unable to access the books that you rightly purchased.

Though I highly doubt this alone was the reason for an account ban. Is it possible your credentials were stolen/misused without your knowledge?

About Kindle, if you're in Europe, you could try Nextory or BookBeat. They don't have as much content, but are good services nevertheless.

> I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.

Sue them.

Surely, you take them to small claims court over it, they won't bother so send anyone because their lawyers cost more per hour than your entire account was worth, you win by default?

remote wiping purchased stuff is diabolical, especially over something so far in the past you can't do a charge back.

What are you using for e-book reading now?

I always find it surprising that apparently it is easy to BAN someone's account but nobody has the power to UNBAN.

But I suppose when you get to the size of Amazon a million bans becomes a statistic...

File suit.