Save lots of money *and* make Kindle better

[Barbara1955]

I not found many ebooks thru Amazon that were bad. Only 2 & I returned the one when they fixed the repeat chapters! Was Basicly an exchange! The 2nd was a ebook 1 page Longggg cripe! Amazon gave me my money back & told me how to find out how long a book was LOL

WARNING to many complain & they may lock your account! Another way to check format is to READ the SAMPLE Before you buy!

[JoeD]

It's a sad state of affairs that Amazon can scare people into not returning too many products that are of poor quality and not fit for sale by hovering an account ban above your head.

I'm all for them banning people who abuse the policy, but when you buy a product and there's clearly something wrong with it that Amazon can verify, there should never be an account ban over returning it.

If you go and buy 5 TVs and return 4 perfectly working TVs because you "didn't like them" or keep returning books because the story wasn't to your liking even though it's a well written and correctly formatted book, then fair enough, expect to be banned for abusing the system. But if you buy 5 TVs and return the first 4 because half the screen is damaged or there's no sound or the picture is broken up, a ban should never happen, Amazon instead should make their suppliers accountable for providing poor quality gear/books.

I will end the rant with a quick question, of all the cases we've heard about where people have had their accounts banned/locked for too many returns, does anyone know of a case where the returns were all damaged/not fit for sale products as opposed to people perhaps abusing an otherwise lenient returns policy?

[DiapDealer]

For ebook returns (and I've only ever returned two because of of formatting issues), I've always done it over the phone, talking to a human. And the customer service reps in those two instances stayed on the phone with me until I provided location numbers and they were able to see the same errors I was seeing. Both reps also indicated they were pulling the books in question from the catalog while the issues were taken up with the publisher/author. I was able to verify that the book was no longer available for purchase after the phone call.

[abookreader]

Originally Posted by JoeD

It's a sad state of affairs that Amazon can scare people into not returning too many products that are of poor quality and not fit for sale by hovering an account ban above your head.

I'm all for them banning people who abuse the policy, but when you buy a product and there's clearly something wrong with it that Amazon can verify, there should never be an account ban over returning it.

If you go and buy 5 TVs and return 4 perfectly working TVs because you "didn't like them" or keep returning books because the story wasn't to your liking even though it's a well written and correctly formatted book, then fair enough, expect to be banned for abusing the system. But if you buy 5 TVs and return the first 4 because half the screen is damaged or there's no sound or the picture is broken up, a ban should never happen, Amazon instead should make their suppliers accountable for providing poor quality gear/books.

I will end the rant with a quick question, of all the cases we've heard about where people have had their accounts banned/locked for too many returns, does anyone know of a case where the returns were all damaged/not fit for sale products as opposed to people perhaps abusing an otherwise lenient returns policy?

Account closing isn't something I obsess over all that much. I return as needed but I don't go looking for reasons to return a product. A few minor formatting errors don't bug me but if a book is obviously a crap product I will return it without a doubt.

I've returned a couple of books (a handful over a course of years), a Kindle Touch (ordered another keyboard instead), and some other products that arrived damaged or not as listed.

Amazon obviously loves me because I received a hand written thank you note from them yesterday for being such a long-time good customer. My husband looked at it and wanted to know just how much money do we send Mr. Bezos anyway?

[Barbara1955]

IF You are buying badly formate ebooks from Amazon WHY dont you get another ereader & buy them some where else? Lifes too short to be in continual state of upset over a book! Maybe ebooks are not for you & you also need to consider going back to HB or PB forms!

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by Katie1

IF You are buying badly formate ebooks from Amazon WHY dont you get another ereader & buy them some where else? Lifes too short to be in continual state of upset over a book! Maybe ebooks are not for you & you also need to consider going back to HB or PB forms!

The ebooks are formatted by the publisher, and will probably be the same versions at every other retailer. There's no point to throwing good money after bad.

[physics]

I mostly read physics textbooks, and the amount of typos in these is staggering. (Whoever thought OCR'ing a math equation was a good idea?!!!)
Anyway, when I'm feeling bored, here's what I do:
1. I download the free sample of a given book.
2. I read through it and make a list of all the OCRed typos I find, including line number. (For physics textbooks, I've never had fewer than 50 in the sample, so this takes awhile.)
3. I delete the sample, and email Kindle Customer Support, saying that I would have bought the book, but there were too many typos. I then list them by line number.
Usually, Kindle Customer Support forwards the list to the publisher, and the book gets pulled within a day or two. They *say* they'll be fixed soon, but I have yet to see any of those books return.

This way the publishers know that it's the *typos* that are holding back their ebooks, and furthermore, no one gets burned by purchasing an unusable book. (Physics textbooks really are unusable if the math is screwed up.)

[Barbara1955]

The title of this thread bothers me....Save lots of money *and* make Kindle better .... sounds to me he wants people to buy ebooks then return them after they read them! Sound like cheating Amazon!

[Clau]

I'm new here but I think the OP's intentions are in the right place. He (or she) said he was being facetious. Besides, you don't need to read an entire book to realize it's full of typos.

But I also see major downside for this, specially with technical books. Let's face it, some engineers write horribly and some do write in their second or third language. It doesn't matter how good they are in their field. It's the publisher's job to correct the typos after all. But some of the papers and works are published by independent publishers or even the scientists themselves, and they make the works available at a nominal price so they can't spend too much money correcting the grammar. So if a publisher gets too many returns for the wrong reasons, Amazon, BN, etc. could stop them from publishing which would be terrible.

I emphasize the word grammar because if the "math" is incorrect or the name of a molecule is grossly misspelled, then it's a completely different story and the mistakes should be reported but preferably to the publisher not Amazon.