[johnnyb]

I was in a situation yesterday many of you were in (and I dreaded the day ;-)). I was asked if I wanted to update a book. Under normal circumstances, I probably wouldn't because I would lose all my annotations and highlights, but it seemed, Amazon had changed something, here's the mail I got:

Hello,

We are happy to announce that an updated version of your past Kindle purchase of The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays by Harry G. Frankfurt is now available. The version you received had typos that have been corrected.

You can receive the new version by replying to this email with the word "Yes" in the first line of your response. Within 2 hours, any device with an active wireless connection that is registered to your account and that has the eBook currently downloaded will be updated automatically.

In order to ensure that your notes, highlights, bookmarks and furthest reading location are retained in the new version, please check to see that all of your devices that you have used to read this book are connected to a network and that their Annotations Backup settings are turned on. For help with modifying settings, go to http://www.amazon.com/kindlesupport and check the help pages for the devices or applications you are using.

You can find more information about Kindle related topics here:
www.amazon.com/kindlesupport

Please Note: in order to receive the updated version, your e-mail response must come from the e-mail address associated with your Amazon account. Responses from other email addresses cannot be processed.

We thank you for your business with Amazon.

Sincerely,
Customer Service Department
Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com

From the mail it becomes quite clear that it would now be possible to retain notes and the rest very easily... Unfortunately it didn't. And I lost a hugh bunch of notes and comments on these essays. Infuriated I wrote to Amazon to ask for reasons, as a reply I got this:

Hello,

I apologize for the inconvenience caused.

I'd like to inform you that, whenever there is an updated version of the kindle book is available, we always send an email notification and we ask your permission whether to update your book or not.

You can automatically receive the new version of the Kindle book, if you're replying to that email with the word "Yes" in the first line of your response.

I see that you've replied with the word "Yes" in the first line of your response for the email which we have sent you about the updated version of your content.

As you have replied with "Yes", the content was automatically updated and downloaded to your Kindle.

I'm sorry, I was unable to assist you in this case and appreciate your patience and understanding

We look forward to seeing you again.

Thank you for your recent inquiry. Did I solve your problem?

No you didn't solve my problem, you barely touched it, it is not an inconvenience that has "mysteriously" been caused, it's pandemonium.
I told them that, including a reference to the passage in the original email that states that everything will be retained, here's their second answer:

Hello,

I'm so sorry, but we can't offer any additional insight or action on this matter.

We appreciate your business and hope to see you again soon.

Thank you for your recent inquiry. Did I solve your problem?

This is so big brother style that for the first time in a year I'm seriously considering leaving the Kindle platform and going to Sony (or anyone) that provide an excellent infrastructure of keeping notes "out of the cloud". I'm really fed up now with their promises and "brave new world" computing solutions. No explanation, no comment on why they said my stuff would be retained and then wasn't.
I'd really like to discuss this, any recommendations, comments, suggestions and criticism are welcome!