I'm scared, frustrated, don't know who to go to anymore

[hard-boiled pat]

Why did jrw sign up here? just to vent about this problem?

[ratflinger]

This is why calibre is your friend. All of my stuff is backed up there, on my laptop.

[Laridae]

Seems to me there's more to this than meets the eye. The OP has posted here to get sympathy for his cause and possibly to embarrass Amazon. But he has only given us a limited and massaged version of the facts. He admits to having numerous and complex dealings with Amazon, and either deliberately or inadvertently something has gone amiss.

Amazon afaik is a large, successful and honourable company. They are not at liberty to divulge the facts of this, or any other specific case because of privacy considerations. From Amazon's point of view the OP, or a related party, has tried to pull a fast one. The evidence is so clear to them that they won't even discuss it.

Sorry guys; without a more complete picture of the OP's actions I gotta go with Amazon on this one!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Harmon

No unless there's a state law or regulation that says as much.

Certainly, it violates our sense of fair play that Amazon has decided not to disclose the reason, but the sad fact is that the customer has no right to know the reason. There doesn't even have to be a reason.

But without a reason, there's no way to really be able to fight this or to know if you did or did not do whatever it is Amazon thinks you've done.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

Are you saying that the removed the books that were actually on the Kindle, or just removed access to your archive?

I noticed that too. I've never heard of Kindles being blacklisted unless they were reported stolen. A Kindle registered to an account that is subsequently closed is deregistered. It's severed from Amazon. If you try to re-register it to the closed account, you will not succeed. Then the OP says: "My already-downloaded content on the kindle is completely gone..." Can Amazon wipe anything from a de-registered Kindle? Nope. All the books that were on the device at the time of the account closing will remain there unless/until they are removed by the owner. Although I'm sure you knew that, I don't think the OP did. Interesting.

[Skydog]

Originally Posted by TimW

I noticed that too. I've never heard of Kindles being blacklisted unless they were reported stolen. A Kindle registered to an account that is subsequently closed is deregistered. It's severed from Amazon. If you try to re-register it to the closed account, you will not succeed. Then the OP says: "My already-downloaded content on the kindle is completely gone..." Can Amazon wipe anything from a de-registered Kindle? Nope. All the books that were on the device at the time of the account closing will remain there unless/until they are removed by the owner. Although I'm sure you knew that, I don't think the OP did. Interesting.

Having read the entire thread, I interpreted the OP's statement differently to mean that his/her archived content became permanently inaccessible. Whatever remains on his/her Kindle is all that is accessible now -- at least until the device dies.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Having read the entire thread, I interpreted the OP's statement differently to mean that his/her archived content became permanently inaccessible. Whatever remains on his/her Kindle is all that is accessible now -- at least until the device dies.

In post #178, the OP said: "My kindle has now been officially BLACKLISTED from amazon. My already-downloaded content on the kindle is completely gone, and I cant re register the Kindle so that I can access my archived content...I guess the logging in via the closed account on my kindle flagged amazon's system, therefore blacklisting the kindle and wiping EVERYTHING." Blacklisting wipes nothing...it merely prevents that device from being registered to any Amazon account.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Justified or not it does not correspond to the way justice work in the brick and mortar world.

If a person offends Sears by not paying their bill, Sears must get a court injunction to seize the property, or rely on collection agencies to recoup part of the payment. Same with a car dealer etc.

Actually, this is not true. If the company has a security interest in the property and can take it without breaching the peace, they are allowed to do so. This is how cars are repossessed; there is no need for a court order.
[/QUOTE]

[jrw93]

Hello All --

Tim, my downloaded content on the Kindle is gone. I do not know how this is possible, and just sent a e-mail to Amazon a hour ago to see if I could get a response. Hopefully I can get a answer, as I did not do anything and my content on my Kindle is gone.

To those who had questions regarding why I logged onto my kindle via a closed account, it was to see if maybe I could access my archived books on my kindle. I know I couldn't access it on Amazon.com, but maybe there was a slight chance that I could access them through my archive as that does not require entering an amazon e-mail and password. I guess upon turning my wifi on and clicking the "archived books" line, my Kindle was automatically flagged and blacklisted.

[BuddyBoy]

Originally Posted by overfloater

I want to believe that everything's above-board here, and that you're just the victim of a misunderstanding. But, IMO, we're not quite getting the whole story.

Also, it's clear you're not just a "regular" Amazon customer. Let me explain that by comparison...


I'd consider myself to fall pretty much into the "standard customer" category.

• I've been an Amazon customer for well over 10 years.
• My primary interaction with Amazon has been to make regular purchases from them of physical items shipped to my home address.
• I have used only a small number of different credit cards during that time
• I have changed home address only a few times and login email address just once.
• I have never had another Amazon.com account. (Nor have I tried to open another one.)
• I have never had any "non-standard" flags on my account -- student, teacher, parent, etc.
• I have never sold items via Amazon.
• I have only ever returned 2 items in 10 years. Both physical items: once because I accidentally ordered 2 copies (my bad, I paid for the return shipping); once because an electronics item had a provably incorrect product description and it was incompatible on arrival.
• The only potentially "odd" activity is having had 3 or 4 orders shipped to my name at one particular foreign address (family back in the UK), but that address has remained unchanged on my Amazon account for 10 years.

With that general usage and purchasing pattern, I'd say there's very little opportunity for Amazon to flag my account for unusual activity.



Now compare your usage pattern:

- You've sold thousands of dollars'-worth of merchandise via Amazon. While not "unusual", exactly, it does still put you in a very small minority of Amazon customers, percentage-wise.

- You're an Amazon Student member. Again, relative minority.

- You've utilized their "trade-in" program before. (Trading-in what?) Yet again, this probably puts you in a minority.

- You had just returned a product prior to the ban for "arriving in a different condition than described". (You say you "never returned a large amount of items" -- but that's subjective and still doesn't really tell us whether you've returned items on a regular basis, or if (like me) this is an incredibly unusual, one-off occurrence for you. Bear in mind I've returned 2 items in 10+ years. The fact that a 2-3 year customer just happens to have been banned after returning an item, having obviously returned others in the past, is a red flag to me.)

- Moreover you express concern about whether you'd be able to return items from your current orders that just shipped if they turned out to be defective. Given the minimal failure rate on most products, I can't say that problems with returns on outstanding orders would ever have crossed my mind in comparison to the aggravation of fighting to get my account reopened -- but apparently it's at the forefront of yours.

----> The whole "buyer/seller/student/trade-in/returns" scenario here could -- if one were a complete cynic (not saying whether I fall into that category...) -- smell of someone trying to work the system. Especially in light of your account(s) situation:


- You have multiple current accounts. ("Other active accounts", per your original post.)

- You've had at least one Amazon account in the past, which you closed voluntarily March 2011.

- It appears you've had several additional Amazon accounts in the past, also closed voluntarily: "I have went ahead and checked through all my past accounts, and every single one was closed on my OWN request." (This directly contradicts what you said later: "I had only closed 1 account prior to this one being closed, but that was in March of 2011." You go on to restate this several times. Something's not adding up here. We're not getting the full story on all your past and present accounts.)

- You tried to open a new account after receiving this recent ban -- contrary to their email instructions -- only to have that new account immediately re-banned.

----> Overall, it sounds like you've had a ton of Amazon accounts. While that may not be in direct violation of their TOS, it does open up a whole mess of potential confusion for sorting this out. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if it flags you for scrutiny in Amazon's system -- it certainly sets off alarm bells here.



Sorry if you really are 100% innocent and are simply getting screwed by the system. But understand that your story, as you've relayed it in pieces here, simply doesn't add up. And the pieces that do fit together trigger a bunch of "Whoah, definitely not your run-of-the-mill Amazon customer" alarms in my head.

You certainly seem to know an awful lot about the OP, including some facts that I don't recall seeing in the thread up to the point of your comment. Pretty impressive first-and-only post, would it stretch the imagination to think you have some ties with Amazon?

Not that I would blame you. The OP's purpose seems to be stirring up indignation about Amazon, but the inconsistancies kind of discredit the attempt.

And not to say that Amazon hasn't been guilty of some jack moves in the past, even in the pre-kindle days. I was one of those folks whose original ebook purchases got trashed when they left the biz in 2002 or 2003.

Too bad we can't know if we have the full story - or more properly, whether the OP has been given the full story or not.

ETA: I quoted all of the above post becuase these kind of posts have a habit of suddenly disappearing.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ApK

If he had backed his stuff up, and not been goofy with his Kindle, and rather just copied the files off via USB, he'd still have his stuff.

My Kindle has less than 5% of the books I've acquired from Amazon. The rest is archived and would be unavailable for copying should the account get closed.

BTW, my paid content and a few of the free books I've acquired are backed up on my PC. Everything else is public domain; so not worth the effort to back up, since they're freely available elsewhere.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

Are you saying that the removed the books that were actually on the Kindle, or just removed access to your archive?

Is Amazon up to its old tricks and pulling another 1984?

[ladyplf]

Originally Posted by BuddyBoy

...

And not to say that Amazon hasn't been guilty of some jack moves in the past, even in the pre-kindle days. I was one of those folks whose original ebook purchases got trashed when they left the biz in 2002 or 2003.

Too bad we can't know if we have the full story - or more properly, whether the OP has been given the full story or not...

I don't know if this story is true or if we have the whole tale, but I'm inclined to believe that it could be true and something like this could happen to any one of us. I was one of those early ebook adopters back in 2002 who trusted Amazon and got shafted in return. So no, I don't trust Amazon.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by overfloater

I have only ever returned 2 items in 10 years. Both physical items: once because I accidentally ordered 2 copies (my bad, I paid for the return shipping); once because an electronics item had a provably incorrect product description and it was incompatible on arrival.

You've only returned 1 item. Defective merchandise and incorrect product descriptions don't count.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by BuddyBoy

ETA: I quoted all of the above post becuase these kind of posts have a habit of suddenly disappearing.

Every now and then, I do the same