How to get Amazon to stop accepting returned Kindle ebooks

[amjbrown]

Originally Posted by kenschunk

No matter what the number is, it's still more than the Sony store will give you, which is exactly zero. I can't even get them to give me credit for a book that was left in my shopping cart at the change to ePub, and wasn't available when I purchased it. Their answer is "well, someday you'll be able to download it, and we don't allow ANY refunds".

If I buy an e or p-book that I don't enjoy, then I think that is my fault.

However, I had a book with a very poorly rendered diagram in it which I thought was material to the plot. It took some effort to find someone senior enough to be able to show initiative, but when I did they were very decent about it. I make a $2.01 profit, and was told to keep the eBook to see if the ePub version fixed the problem (it didn't). I effectively enjoyed a sub-standard book for free. They gave me a voucher which I had to spend quite quickly in the Sony Bookstore, but I thought it was a fair solution.

It took some legwork though!

amjb

[amjbrown]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I aksed, and it turns out that he would buy multiple technical books on a single topic and only keep the best one. I think he was pushing his luck, honestly.

I think you are totally correct about the luck pushing!

I used the O'Reilly Safari bookshelf thingie to achive that exact aim. I would then buy the best of the technical books after downloading a few chapters of each and skimming the rest of each book online. That worked well for me and cost about $90 a year - the cost of four wrong books, and had enough tokens to probably download four books worth of chapters as PDFs.

amjb

[HarryT]

I don't see anything at all wrong with returning a sub-standard product (indeed, consumer law gives you the right to do so, at least here in the UK), but I have to agree with Nate that it is "pushing your luck" to buy 3 or 4 books with the express intention of returning all but one of them. That's just abusing the good-will of the retailer (IMHO),

[Ea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't see anything at all wrong with returning a sub-standard product (indeed, consumer law gives you the right to do so, at least here in the UK), but I have to agree with Nate that it is "pushing your luck" to buy 3 or 4 books with the express intention of returning all but one of them. That's just abusing the good-will of the retailer (IMHO),

Of course. If the procuct is defective, you have the right to complain and would usually involve return or some kind of compensation - doesn't the same rules apply for all of the EU member countries now? But not liking the book doesn't make it sub-standard, there has to be something wrong with it at an objective level.

[amjbrown]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't see anything at all wrong with returning a sub-standard product (indeed, consumer law gives you the right to do so, at least here in the UK

Totally agree, and Waterstones would had had fire and brimstone raining down on them if it had been them. Trouble is, shopping from the UK in the Stony Bookstore is technically a big no-no, so I didn't feel able to insist on my UK rights!

[Ea]

I think you misunderstood me. Wouldn't you have to be able to prove that the product is sub-standard in order to claim our consumer's rights? For that you'd need somekind of objective (as opposed to subjective) guidelines to what means that the book is 'sub-standard'. I hear you saying that you have rights to reurn it even if only you think it's substandard. Some/many shops are lenient towards the customers because it buys them goodwill - but it still doesn't mean you have a right in the name of the law just because you don't like the book.

[krischik]

Originally Posted by olympian

Amazon DRM's been hacked?

Non-TOPAZ books use the same DRM as Mobipocket. Google for "Mobipocket books on Kindle".

[andym]

30 (mostly) accidental purchases? Sorry, but at first sight I'm with Amazon on this one. I've certainly returned faulty eBooks, and I did just return a DVD mistook 'Twilight 2-Disc Edition' for 'Twilight 2' (duh!). But I can't think of any reasonable explanation for this number of accidental purchases.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ea

it still doesn't mean you have a right in the name of the law just because you don't like the book.

Oh no, I completely agree - "not liking" a book doesn't make it sub-standard.

I'll give you a specific example: I recently bought a Vince Flynn thriller for my Kindle. Most of the punctuation marks are missing from it - no quotation mark, no dashes, etc. That's clearly a production fault, and I don't think that anyone would argue that it's a sub-standard book. As it happens, though, the missing punctuation doesn't make it unreadable, so I've kept it.

[kenschunk]

Originally Posted by Harmon

I don't get this. How was it in your shopping cart but not available when you purchased it?

If you are saying that you paid for the book but it wasn't downloaded to your computer after you paid, then you should not be asking for a refund, but rather, for the book.

If they are saying they don't have the book (maybe because it hasn't been converted to epub yet) and won't give you back your money, call your credit card company & contest the charge. Tell them you paid for the product but Sony refuses to deliver the item you bought, or to refund your money. You'll get your money back.

Long story, but in short it's not in ePub yet. Maybe a week. Maybe more. The only choices appear to be wait or go to the credit card company for a charge back. I wouldn't have minded the wait all that much if they would have been honest on the subject, but Sony's lost my eBook business for a good long time over this one.

[kennyc]

Well, I think it's entirely too easy to "accidently" purchase a book when browsing wirelessly, but still it sounds like something is fishy if 30 books have been returned, regardless of total number bought.

[joobies]

I have over 600 books from Amazon in the past 15 months and have returned somewhere between 3-5. My mistakes were due to a fuzzy thought process at the time (amazing that there were not more) rather than anything devious.
I hope the actions of a few people will not affect everyone negatively with any changes in policy.

[Dr. Drib]

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?

Yes, this sounds rather suspicious, or extremely careless on his part. I haven't returned a single book, and I've bought a lot of books in the past 4 months.

I, too, would be very, very suspicious of anyone returning 30 books!


Don

[kennyc]

Hey Don, did you finish the John Irving yet?

[bean]

With physical books it's simple, you can return a book in its original condition which pretty much makes it impossible to read it fully and return then but who knows what happens with an eBook.