Is it normal that kindle appears in amazon.de and .co.uk account simultaneously?

[Jackie7]

Hi,

I have a problem, which the amazon support team is unable to solve, and I think I may have found the reason why I'm having so much trouble: I received my brand-new kindle from amazon.de yesterday, it came with Software 3.2 preinstalled, but I am unable to register it via Wi-Fi, i.e. the device appears in my amazon.de account, and I can surf the web on my kindle, but when I try to register my kindle using the settings-menu, I keep getting the message:

"Your kindle is unable to connect at this time". I have tried rebooting, and did a hard-reset (20 seconds pressing the standby slider). None helped. I also removed the device from my amazon.de account (using my PC), when trying to re-add the kindle by entering its 16 digit serial number, I got an error message, so I called amazon support, and they re-added the kindle for me. The person on the phone also told me that he could see that my kindle connected to my account, but the kindle itself never receives any message from amazon telling it that it's sucessfully registered, i.e. my kindle thinks it is unregistered.

Amazon now thinks that my kindle may be defective, and is going to send a new one, which is fine. However, I have come to another suspicion, since I have two Amazon accounts with the same login-data, one at amazon.de, and one at amazon.co.uk, and even a third one at amazon.com. All three accounts have the same emailaddress and password, but are different in other aspects, i.e. they have their own baskets, wishlists, etc.

I have now noticed that my kindle appears not only in my amazon.de account, but also in my amazon.co.uk account, which is somehow strange. How does the kindle know which account to connect to? May this be causing all the trouble?

[Mike L]

This does seem odd. Like you, I've got accounts at multiple Amazons, with the same login for each, but I've never seen anything like the behaviour you describe. Each account seems to be completely unaware of the other, and only one of them knows about my Kindle.

Have you by any chance installed the Kindle for PC (or Mac) application from either UK or DE? If so, when you register the application, it automatically registers you in the country from which you downloaded the software. This isn't obvious. It's just possible that could be confusing the system, but it doesn't seem likely.

I suspect that the Wi-Fi issue is a separate problem. I can't see why an "Unable to connect" message could be connected with your registration. If it can't connect, it can't know whether it is registered.

You will confirm that (or otherwise) when the replacement Kindle arrives. In the meantime, I'd double-check your wireless network, and especially the firewall settings. Try connecting another device to the same network, or connect the Kindle to another network. That might at least tell you whether it is a genuine connection problem.

[Jackie7]

Hi Mike,

I have tested the kindle in two different wireless networks, which both have a NAT-router installed, which is the default for most home networks these days I assume. Does the kindle require a specific port to be forwarded?

[koland]

No specific port, but it does need to know the password if you are using any type of security (and I'll assume you don't need to reconfigure the router to give client access -- if you do, the MAC address is on the settings page).

You are going in to Settings, WiFi Networks, scanning, picking a network and trying to connect, right? Not just thinking it's automatic (that only happens with AT&T hotspots in the US)....

[Jackie7]

Of course it needs the password for my WPA2 encryption, but as I wrote, I can use the kindle to surf the Web via WiFi, so it is basically able to connect. Only the registration process currently fails, which is strange indeed.