How to get Amazon to stop accepting returned Kindle ebooks

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by CCDMan

Return Books??! I have never returned even ONE book (print or ebook) in the 50 years I have known how to read.

Buy a book and if it is crap, it is YOUR PROBLEM. There is no excuse for returning books unless they are physically defective (unreadable formatting, missing content and such).

Haven't you ever had a physically defective book? I bought one earlier this year - an expensive hardback - and three months later a quarter of the pages just fell out; they hadn't been properly glued into the spine. Waterstones replaced it for another copy without question, even though I didn't have the receipt. Good customer service there.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by CCDMan

Buy a book and if it is crap, it is YOUR PROBLEM. There are reviews, there are samples, and if you are in a bookstore buying paper you can sit down and read a bit. There is no excuse for returning books unless they are physically defective (unreadable formatting, missing content and such)

There are not always samples. (Amazon has them, but not every ebook seller does--and the samples may be in non-DRM'd formats when the actual book is Topaz.) There are not reviews of the *formatting* of ebooks, not in any coherent location.

Books received as gifts are not checked at the store. For that matter, when I go to the store to buy a book, I don't expect to need to flip through the pages to find out if the font is readable or the contents don't match the description--if it was mis-shelved in nonfic and was instead a novel, the bookstore erred in placement. Books advertised as Young Adult may contain content parents don't want their kids to have, which they don't discover until they read through them. A lot of stores object to people standing in the aisles and reading entire chapters at a time.

All that aside--books are no different from any other product. "It turns out I don't need this/already have one/don't have room for it" is all the explanation most stores need for returns; if it's in good condition, that's fine.

Ebooks should allow returns for
--bad formatting (missing punctuation, extra-wide margins, bad font/text size, OCR errors, lacks pictures included in paper version, Topaz, wrong metadata)
--file not usable with purchaser's software arrangement
--selected wrong filetype (for those that require 1 purchase per filetype)
--corrupt file

If the seller doesn't have previews, they should also allow returns for "started reading it and didn't like it." And "got this [coupon] as a gift; don't want it; exchange for different book please."

In a sane world, they'd allow "already have this in a different version/different publisher." Eventually, I think we'll see that--when enough ebook stores have open competition that customer goodwill becomes more important than the $3 profit from a single ebook.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by CCDMan

Return Books??! I find it very hard to believe that all 30 books in this example had unreadable formatting, missing content, or similar issues. Most likely the reader just did not like the content.

While in general I agree with you, in this particular case I'm not at all sure that what was going on was necessarily bad. It depends on what he was doing. (Note that the characterization of the purchases as "accidental" is Amazon's, & I'll bet there's a list of acceptable reasons for return, & the selection of "accidental" by Nate's friend might have been just the closest approximation to what the real reason was.)

For example, if you are buying a technical book at a bricks store, you get to browse the entire contents of the book including the contents page and the index, in making your buying decision. This is critical to the selection process.

But there is no comparable process for ebooks. A sample, which in my experience just consists of the first chapter of a book, is not useful for purposes of acquiring a technical book. The only way to decide on what to buy is to acquire all the books, browse them, & make your selection.

But if you do this, eventually you are going to get caught up in Amazon's return policy net.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Harmon

While in general I agree with you, in this particular case I'm not at all sure that what was going on was necessarily bad. It depends on what he was doing. (Note that the characterization of the purchases as "accidental" is Amazon's, & I'll bet there's a list of acceptable reasons for return, & the selection of "accidental" by Nate's friend might have been just the closest approximation to what the real reason was.)

For example, if you are buying a technical book at a bricks store, you get to browse the entire contents of the book including the contents page and the index, in making your buying decision. This is critical to the selection process.

But there is no comparable process for ebooks. A sample, which in my experience just consists of the first chapter of a book, is not useful for purposes of acquiring a technical book. The only way to decide on what to buy is to acquire all the books, browse them, & make your selection.

But if you do this, eventually you are going to get caught up in Amazon's return policy net.

HOWEVER, you only get to browse what the bricks and mortar store HAS in STOCK. You don't get to order 5 into the store and then pick and choose. Since Amazon has a much larger stock than most brick stores, you can't really apply a comparison. If this person had access to all those books at a brick store, he could have done what you suggested. Instead, he took advantage of Amazon's larger inventory--and browsed and returned. Not exactly apples to apples.

[Ea]

I've recently started to use Google books to browse non-fiction more extensively, to see if a book might be worth purchasing. That, and reading reviews.

[Daithi]

Originally Posted by Ea

I've recently started to use Google books to browse non-fiction more extensively, to see if a book might be worth purchasing. That, and reading reviews.

I've also found this helpful. Great advice.

[bgalbrecht]

I've bought hundreds of books at Fictionwise, and I've only attempted to return 1, because the footnotes were messed up. If I had been paying attention, I would have returned two more, because I accidentally bought a double volume, and then bought them separately. If I hadn't already downloaded them I would have asked for a refund.

[skoobwoman]

Brick and mortar stores have done the same thing--some will stop accepting returns if someone overuses the option. It costs time and hence money to handle a return (I'm not sure how long it takes an Amazon service person to process the return). They instituted the sample download so that people could evaluate a book before buying it.

Recently, someone bought an expensive used book of mine on Amazon--they kept it for 3 full days and then announced that they had made a mistake. I had to refund their money or risk a bad rating. They could very well have read the whole book, copied or read just what they needed and then claimed to have made a mistake. I'm not saying that this is what happened with the person in discussion--just that vendors have to protect themselves from that kind of abuse.

[CCDMan]

There are not reviews of the *formatting* of ebooks, not in any coherent location.

No, but the samples are likely to reveal formatting issues. After all, how likley is it that formatting errors will just happen to avoid the first chapter?

Haven't you ever had a physically defective book?

Once only. A paperback I bought at Costco that had pages w/o print. Oddly enough, this was just before I bought the Kindle and when I saw that the book was available on Kindle, I just got that instead of exchanging it at Costco.

For example, if you are buying a technical book at a bricks store, you get to browse the entire contents of the book including the contents page and the index, in making your buying decision. This is critical to the selection process.

True, but who buys technical books for the Kindle? Until a higher res device shows up that can handle graphics and color easily, this is a non-issue. I do agree that this could be an issue in the future, however.

Ebooks should allow returns for
--bad formatting (missing punctuation, extra-wide margins, bad font/text size, OCR errors, lacks pictures included in paper version, Topaz, wrong metadata)
--file not usable with purchaser's software arrangement
--selected wrong filetype (for those that require 1 purchase per filetype)
--corrupt file

Generally agree although I do think that formatting would have to be pretty bad to be unusable. Plus some of the above should be an exchange for same title, as opposed to a refund, assuming a functional file is available.

[Elfwreck]

Ebooks should allow returns for
--bad formatting (missing punctuation, extra-wide margins, bad font/text size, OCR errors, lacks pictures included in paper version, Topaz, wrong metadata)
--file not usable with purchaser's software arrangement
--selected wrong filetype (for those that require 1 purchase per filetype)
--corrupt file

Generally agree although I do think that formatting would have to be pretty bad to be unusable. Plus some of the above should be an exchange for same title, as opposed to a refund, assuming a functional file is available.

Options 3 & 4 should easily only be exchangable for the same title. Option 2, also--except this is most likely to happen with a seller who only provides a single format, or in a situation where all the formats are incompatible with the end-user's software. (We offer ADE and LIT! So as long as you're not on certain Linux machines, you're fine! But we're not going to tell you that before purchase!) (It took me quite a while to figure out that DRM'd LIT could only be *downloaded* with Internet Explorer.)

One person's version of "easily ignored" is another's "constant eyestrain for the whole book." If the ebook doesn't match the pbook for punctuation, italics, & spelling, that's grounds enough in my mind to call it "bad formatting" and return it. "Minor" OCR errors can ruin a crucial scene; it only takes one "Ill love you always!" to break the mood of the story.

Large margins are another formatting problem. Some epubs come with M-space based margins--so the initial view on the SonyReader is limited to about 2/3 of the screen, but switching to larger text makes for larger margins, so on the largest size, there are two or three words per line.

I almost want to say "font size too big or too small is good reason to return the ebook." I look at pbooks before I buy them and don't buy if the font size bugs me. For ebooks that don't have samples, I think the sellers should take returns based on "I don't like the layout and find it unpleasant to read."

For those that have samples, returns for formatting should be limited to those that have problems that didn't show up in the example--for example, coding scripts that have botched formatting, but no samples were included in the intro chapter, or tables, or indented quotations that are formatted with a different font or heavy indents that make them unreadable.

[tyche]

Originally Posted by skoobwoman

Recently, someone bought an expensive used book of mine on Amazon--they kept it for 3 full days and then announced that they had made a mistake. I had to refund their money or risk a bad rating. They could very well have read the whole book, copied or read just what they needed and then claimed to have made a mistake. I'm not saying that this is what happened with the person in discussion--just that vendors have to protect themselves from that kind of abuse.

The buyer sounds like the type of person who buys an expensive video camera for a trip and then returns it when they get back.

[Not_A_Crook]

I wonder if Amazon sends an angry man with a baseball bat to find you if you do this over 90 times...

[joblack]

Originally Posted by Achilles

30 returns?!?! Holy crap! How can you "accidentally" purchase books 30 times? Sounds like something fishy is going on here and I can totally understand why Amazon would be suspicious, especially now that the Amazon DRM has been hacked... who's to say the guy didn't purchase those 30 books with the intent of removing the DRM, saving a copy and then returning them?

It is? Give me more information ...

[Blue Tyson]

What I was wondering, has anyone returned free books? That might be funny.

[HistoryWes]

Originally Posted by lisreed

I have never returned an ebook or a paperbook in my life. And I buy books both ebooks & paper all the time. I would only return an ebook if it was formatted wrong and I couldn't read it. Amazon is not a library. If there is nothing technically wrong with the book, I don't think they should accept returns. They allow samples to see if you want it before you buy it.

Same here. I've probably bought well over five thousand books in my life (more if you count yard sales) and I've only returned one book in my life-- it was a present and I got two of them.