I'm one of the people who responds to the various questions posed on nownow. We have just been advised that we are now forbidden from responding to any question that can be construed as being of a technical support nature (regarding Kindle) and we can be banned if we ignore this edict. So you're advised to refrain from asking any support questions of us, and must now contact Amazon customer support directly for any problems or concerns you have with Kindle.
Here's the pertinent portion of the email that some of us received (their email system is somewhat "broken" so many people don't receive any correspondence from them). We already knew their policy regarding solicitation of votes from persons asking question, so that part isn't a surprise.
Quote:
"Message from Amazon Requester Inc. (turk-nemo-requestor@amazon.com)
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Dear MTurk worker,
It has come to our attention that Kindle users are seeking Kindle customer support by asking these questions through the MTurk HIT "NowNow Research Question for $1695 Weekly Reward. "
We appreciated that some of you have tried to answer Kindle customer support questions, but we have decided it is more appropriate that our own Amazon customer service support these users to ensure they have a great experience. Therefore, please do not work on any HITs for "NowNow Research Question for $1695 Weekly Reward. " that could be Kindle customer support questions. If you submit a HIT on any Kindle customer support question, we will be forced to ban you from working on future NowNow research questions.
It has also come to our attention that some workers have been soliciting "Great" votes from our users. Soliciting votes from our users is against our rules and will result in your account being banned from working on any future NowNow hits.
Thank you for your understanding and support.
NowNow Team"
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To add some further information, we were taken by surprise last November when the group of questions originating from users Kindles was added with little fanfare. Matter of fact, we had absolutely NO training of any sort from Amazon themselves regarding the Kindle ("they sprang it upon us" is a mild way of putting it), and any information we did find, we located on our own. For the record, we have no more knowledge of it that any of you could find on the internet on your own...there's no "inside" or "secret" information that any of us know (which is why all those "how many Kindles has Amazon sold" questions only received guesses--we really don't know either).
Amazon should've made a decision back then how to deal with Kindle support--either send the questions to us, but actually provide information on the product for us to work with, or have actively filtered out support questions from day one. They did neither.