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Originally Posted by soulfuldog
You would imagine that Amazon will have simply some kind of limit on how many times per year people can sign up/cancel a subscription. Or am I missing something?
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My impression from the rules is that the "Trial" is once. Once you do a free trial, you can't just cancel and then sign up for that again.
Generally speaking, I can say that Amazon does have things in place to stop some forms of cheating, and I would expect they might have algorithms in place (or they will after they figure things out) to stop people from "cheating."
For example, in the early kindle days, when they caught too many returns, they bricked people's kindles. Now if they catch various forms of cheating, they dis-allow returns. There are certain algorithms that catch the problems--in x span of time, how many returns? If y, then the returns are shut off (and when that happens, it's my understanding you can no longer return a book for any reason). Other behavior is also tracked and caught: If you buy book one in a series, return it, buy book two and return it...you may find that after you buy book 3, you cannot return it (or any others).
At a guess, Amazon will work to define algorithms for certain behavior they believe is cheating. Without necessarily accusing anyone, they will likely keep them from subscribing or will cancel the subscription. So if a person were to subscribe and somehow "try" 400 books in one month (reading some or none), they may not allow that person to subscribe again. They could, as they do with returns, simply say, "We won't tell you what "too many" is--but you've borrowed too many.
One of the complaints I saw with a blogger who was blocked from returns was that "Amazon refused to tell me how many returns was too many." Commenters pointed out that if Amazon set a Finite number, people would just stay below that number. The blogger in question mentioned she was returning books at a rate of approximately 60 percent (after her first year of Kindle ownership where she was returning books at about 40 percent). My guess was that during her first year, Amazon may not have even HAD the algorithms checking, so she got away with 40 and then kept on going to 60.
As others have pointed out, Amazon can also see whether a person finishes a book. The blogger above freely admitted that she finished most books, but they didn't meet her criteria for being good enough to keep.
Shrug. People will get away with some things for a while and then the rules will change. It is as it ever was: Build a lock. Break the lock. Build a better lock...