Being a book lover in a land where there were few book shops and that too highly priced I purchased a Kindle 3G in September 2012 while in Africa. I didn’t purchase many books online, I found a lot of out of copy right classics on PDF format and saved them on the Kindle.
First of all a lot of these books were distorted in the machine - I guess Amazon wants its customers to only buy books from them and so ensure that PDF formatted files appear distorted - just a hunch. In spite of it I did enjoy reading on the reader and to be honest the experience was good.
And then I was back in India, back to physical books and for about 2-3 months the Kindle was kept aside. As I browsed for books online I saw that a lot of the books were cheaper on the kindle version and so I tried to fire up the machine again and to my dismay it would charge.
I called Amazon.in and they directed me to Amazon.com saying out of warranty products bought on that site can only be handled by executives from that organization. On having a long distance call with an executive from Amazon.com they said I was out of the warranty period and so there was nothing they could do other than offer me discounts on new or refurbished Kindles. I must admit the call option on the website worked like a charm, the minute you click, you get a call back which was the sliver lining for me.
There seems to be a business plan here - Make readers that don’t last too long, they go kaput in two years or three; amass these from the market and refurbish them and then feed it back to the foolish customers.
I tried to prevail my worries upon the executive and he stated with a lot of sadness in his voice that there was nothing he could do. I asked him how long did a Kindle last on an average and he said he wouldn’t know that but he had seen cases of it lasting up to 7 years. The executive agreed to my request to send me the discount options and he went out of the way to help me with sending it to my new e-mail ID, and the American bewildered by my long and complicated name took the extra time to ensure I got my mail before saying he was sorry once again about my Kindle and hung up.
And so my Kindle paperwhite is now a swindled paperweight! Amazon - One the most reputed organizations whose anecdotes of exemplary customer service can be found all over the net space unfortunately let me down. I have come to the conclusion that buying a physical book from a store for a few rupees extra is well worth its salt than trusting a corporation that runs business on the principle of forcing its customers to abandon the device for an upgrade. Amazon is aptly named so - it is a confusing jungle filled with unknown creatures - some of which may turn out friendly, some of it may be harmful and some fatal!