K3 registration rights / usage question

[Prash]

Hi all,

(It's been a while since I posted here, but I have been a frequent visitor because of a strange, indescribable pull towards MR) I'll just get to the question right away.

My brother in law bought a K3 Wifi a year ago, and it froze after about three months of usage. He had a few calls with Amazon support, and had their assistance to get it fixed, but it did not help. By the way, this K3 was bought on ebay India through a reseller who bought it first in the US, so it was not directly bought from Amazon website. As the Kindle could not be made to work again even after the Amazon support group tried different things over phone, they sent him a replacement K3 Wifi without asking back the frozen one. I had seen the frozen K3 then, and it just didn't respond to anything - reset through the slide button, charging for several hours etc. I didn't bother about trying to open it up and look inside, as I barely knew anything about Kindle then.

I was surprised that Amazon did not ask it back, as I thought one would usually have to send a device back first to get a replacement. The return costs from India to US would have been almost the price of Kindle itself, but that's another matter.

Fast forward one year to 2012, Tuesday, September the 4th. I bumped into an article about unbricking a K3. This one to be exact. I was couple of days away from buying a new PRS 350 from ebay which was going to be my first eink reader, but as I bumped into this article I thought of giving it a try. I couldn't possibly do more harm if I hacked it, and it has been painful (for me) to see an unused K3 lying in an old box, frozen and cold without a future. So I took it from my brother in law right away and got down to work.

And, after the experiment and a really long charging session which lasted about 6 hours, I was looking at the screen which said if I wanted to use it while charging, I should disconnect it from the PC. There, the story of my first real ereader.

Offtopic:

Spoiler:

Though I have been a frequent MR visitor, I didn't knew much about Kindle platform. I always thought it is a completely closed device, without sensible features and utilities which can be found in Sony readers. How wrong I was - and the K3 hacks page on MR simply blew me away. Everyday since last Tuesday has been a crazy ride, and a reading marathon. I started from an iPaq, then a cheap Chinese tablet which I still use. But this one is leaps ahead when it comes down to pure reading. My overall efficiency has improved a lot as I can read almost everywhere with minimal discomfort. I am entering a totally different topic here, so I'll reserve more praise and opinion for a different thread.

I had also done a factory reset after the battery-removal reset to make sure the default firmware loads again, and now the device doesn't show any registration info. My brother in law had registered the replacement K3 on his Amazon account as soon as he had received it. My question is, can I register this Kindle on Amazon under my name? Or can I atleast use the web browser? I am a bit paranoid and I am thinking if I do register the old K3 or use Wifi on the device, Amazon might block both the K3s - as the first one was supposed to be bricked/dead/never used again? Or am I being too paranoid? Please advise if using it would be acceptable.

I am thinking about emailing Amazon and ask them what to do. But first I will ask my brother in law to dig up his old emails and see if they have shared any usage policy for the frozen kindle. I hope I am not going over the top with this, so please share your opinion. And I apologize about my extremely long post if it made you sleepy/bored, couldn't keep it short.

Thanks,
prash

[NiLuJe]

@Prash: There's a good chance Amazon blacklisted the 'broken' Kindle when they sent a replacement device, so, you'll have your answer very soon if you try to register it .

That said, there's a few features unavailable if the device is unregistered: Collections being the most important/useful.

[Mike L]

There's a good chance Amazon blacklisted the 'broken' Kindle when they sent a replacement device,

That's not my experience. I was in a similar situation a while ago. Amazon definitely did not blacklist the old Kindle. It was still registered to me by the time I got round to sending it back (which I did voluntarily).

But, of course, that doesn't mean that the same will be true in this case.

I had also done a factory reset after the battery-removal reset to make sure the default firmware loads again, and now the device doesn't show any registration info. My brother in law had registered the replacement K3 on his Amazon account as soon as he had received it. My question is, can I register this Kindle on Amazon under my name?

Just because the device doesn't show any registration, that doesn't mean it's not registered. You should get your brother-in-law to go the Manage Your Kindle page and check there to see if it's registered. If it is, have him unregister it (from the same page). It should then be OK to for you to register it to yourself.

Even if that doesn't work, I would think the very worst that could happen is that you won't be able to register to old one. I can't see why Amazon would blacklist the new one. But who knows?

Mike

[Prash]

My main concern is the possibility of new one being blocked, which is why I haven't taken the old one online. So I'll have him check it if its still registered on his name. If not, I'll have him contact customer support first and see what they have to say and return it if they suggest so.

Maybe I should ask Amazon for a reward for fixing the old one. AFAIK they'll refund the return shipping costs (please correct me if I am wrong), so it shouldn't be a problem.

[geekmaster]

@Prash: I added your success report to the simple debricking sticky first post.

Your "strange, indescribable pull towards MR" is a serious affliction common to persistent visitors of MR. Perhaps more addicting than television or video games (or pr0n).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Prash

My main concern is the possibility of new one being blocked, which is why I haven't taken the old one online. So I'll have him check it if its still registered on his name. If not, I'll have him contact customer support first and see what they have to say and return it if they suggest so.

I think that contacting Amazon's Kindle customer support is an excellent idea.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

[
Your "strange, indescribable pull towards MR" is a serious affliction common to persistent visitors of MR. Perhaps more addicting than television or video games (or pr0n).

I'll say. It's the first place I visit in the morning. I bought Tapatalk so I'll have MR always with me. Although I don't watch TV or play video games I find it hard to stay away from MR.

[Mike L]

Prash,

I still think it's extremely unlikely that Amazon would take any action against the new Kindle. There's no reason for them to do that. It wouldn't be in their interest to do so. But, of course, it would make good sense to contact customer support in advance, just to be really sure.

You also wrote:

AFAIK they'll refund the return shipping costs (please correct me if I am wrong)

That is correct. When I was in this situation, they offered to rufund the "shipping costs" (postage). In the end, I decided not to bother to have them do that, because it was a relatively small amount.

Mike

[ixtab]

Yeah, pretty much the same "intuition" here.

You had ordered the replacement in good faith, and Amazon essentially decided that it would be more economic to just let the old device "die" instead of having it returned to them.

I don't think that you have anything to fear for the *new* (=replacement) device. The old ("broken") one may, or may not, have ended up on a blacklist of "presumably unusable" devices.

In any case, I second the suggestion to just get in touch with Amazon CS, and explain what happened (you could even mention this thread. After all, it's not like you did anything illegal or against the terms of use). In the worst case, they'll say that they want the device back (but that shouldn't incur any further cost for you). In the best case, they'll say "we don't care", and you're free to do whatever you want with the device.

[Prash]

Thanks a lot for the replies everyone.

I'll get in touch with Amazon CS as soon as possible, or will have by my brother in-law himself contact them which might be better and keep things simple. If I am asked to return the device, I'll probably get a K3W or even a K3G from ebay, instead of the K4 as I find the keyboard very useful, plus free Wikipedia where ever I go (almost) is a very tempting feature.

Thanks again, I hope it will be sorted out quickly.

Originally Posted by geekmaster

@Prash: I added your success report to the simple debricking sticky first post. Your "strange, indescribable pull towards MR" is a serious affliction common to persistent visitors of MR. Perhaps more addicting than television or video games (or pr0n).

Originally Posted by Blossom

I'll say. It's the first place I visit in the morning. I bought Tapatalk so I'll have MR always with me. Although I don't watch TV or play video games I find it hard to stay away from MR.

Thanks! And you're spot on about MR addiction analysis.