No More Free Amazon Cloud?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But that's precisely the point: it appears as though it HAS changed. Your and Shari's experiments strongly suggest that personal document archiving has been separated from Cloud Drive again, and that's definitely a change!

Do you still see your personal docs in the Cloud Drive?

Storage is storage. They aren't moving things around necessarily, they just aren't counting them against the cloud drive and they don't show them. For example, when I tested the sendtokindle, it doesn't show up in the cloud drive (last activity there is March 6).

I agree, that most of the confusion is because Amazon sent out that email a year or so ago saying they were combining the services. That certainly had me confused. Now they are breaking them apart (probably without doing anything special other than marking your cloud full/not-in-use or marking it 'sub' and having things show up there as in the past.)

I'm just glad I wasn't using the cloud much at all and that I can still email review copies around when necessary. Hopefully those who are kicked out of the free storage will find satisfactory substitutes.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by induna

Yes, under 'My_Send_to_Kindle_Docs'.

My point, Harry, was that nothing has changed from the end user's point of view with respect to personal docs. They can still be uploaded to the cloud and synched across devices whether or not one has opted for one of the new plans. I don't really care what Amazon calls it as long as it continues to work for free.

This is exactly the point that I was making. There is no change to the way personal document archiving works from the standpoint of your Kindle. Way back when the archive was rolled into the cloud drive, I tried uploading a document directly to the "My Send-to-Kindle Docs" folder on my Amazon Cloud Drive to see if I would be able to then access that file from my Kindle. I was not. I was never able to add documents to my Kindle storage using any other method than email or the Send to Kindle app, and I'm still not. Was anyone ever able to upload a doc directly to that folder and have it be accessible to their Kindle? Or were people only ever able to download things to their computer/tablet from that folder?

Shari

[shalym]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Storage is storage. They aren't moving things around necessarily, they just aren't counting them against the cloud drive and they don't show them. For example, when I tested the sendtokindle, it doesn't show up in the cloud drive (last activity there is March 6).

Apparently from what it says on Nate's site, there was a glitch yesterday with send to kindle. Have you tested it again today?

Shari

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by shalym

Apparently from what it says on Nate's site, there was a glitch yesterday with send to kindle. Have you tested it again today?

Shari

No, but it shows up on my kindle so that is all that matters to me. I don't expect it to show in the cloud part of their display (and if it does fine, if not fine.) But you make a good point. There were glitches yesterday so some of the things I tested might have different results today.

[eschwartz]

To be honest, this whole affair is exactly how I'd expect it to be by default.

Amazon since way back when offered send-to-Kindle with archiving and cross-device sync.
Then out came their homegrown Cloud Storage lets-compete-with-dropbox-box-onedrive-gdrive-and-umpteeen-others offering. Like most, they offered freemium storage models. In this case, 5GB.
They combined PDOCs with Cloud Storage to make things simpler

Now they decided they are no longer interested in offering free starter storage, because honestly it doesn't stand out all that much anymore ... but that doesn't in and of itself mean they wish to destroy the PDOC service.
Granted, every single person here who insisted the sky is falling is totally right, that anything can happen. But that concern has been answered most elegantly:

Originally Posted by murg

And Amazon could decide to charge US$100 per gigabyte per month, at some point in the future.

You have no point.

What instead happened? Amazon re-evaluated what their Could Storage was about, decided it was no longer compatible with the PDOC service... and unbundled them again.

[tomsem]

I believe it is still the case that if you have a Kindle or Fire device registered to your Amazon account, you get 5GB for free. If you are also a Prime member, you get an additional 5GB with that subscription (plus unlimited photo storage). So if you want 5GB send to kindle storage, get any Kindle or Fire on ebay and register it. You don't have to actually use it use it.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Note that the Unlimited Photos plan (plus 5Gb for videos and files) is included with Prime.

Not that that's very helpul for non-Prime users, but for Prime members like myself (who may have deleted that email without reading it and panicked a little when they saw this post), nothing is really changing.

Yeah, I'm one of those who got the "Prime Message" and I just thought they were introducing a new Unlimited Plan. My only question about this ... does this effect the Kindle "Send To" documents I collect from the Internet? If -- for whatever reason -- I don't re-up with Prime next year and don't pay the $12 for 5 GBs, will I lose those documents? Or are those "documents" treated differently?

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by issybird

Eh, Amazon doesn't owe you anything. It's a business decision and you're free to take your business elsewhere. You might deplore the decision, regret the change, even think it'll be bad for Amazon's business, but I don't see how you can call it unfair. Did Amazon promise free storage in perpetuity and renege?

Actually, if they sell the device with the promise of providing space to store your documents, that is an implied contract. If that's a feature of their ecosystem -- one that caused you to chose Kindle over Kobo (for example) -- and then they take that feature away, it is (at the very least) a shoddy business practice. There was a time when this sort of feature was "grandfathered in," because it was considered unfair to remove a promised feature after the fact.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

FYI: The SendToKindle feature worked for me.

The file is on my Kindle, but not in the cloud.

So they've already implemented the change?

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by crich70

Legally it may not be wrong but they are likely to price a lot of customers out of it if they keep it up, and that is morally wrong I think. Certainly for $11.99 they could give their customers a bit more space than just 5 GB for non-photo files.

Actually 5 GBs can hold a lot of documents. Can't it?

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

It turns out (near as I can tell) the sendtokindle feature from blogs still works just fine without the cloud being a part of it. But because Amazon has many features/functions, it was not all that easy to tell which were affected by this change.

If that's true, that's all I really use the Amazon Cloud for -- that and the music I buy from Amazon ... does this change affect that or will that music remain available no matter what I do? (I'm not talking about uploaded music, just what I buy from Amazon.)

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by shalym

As far as I can tell, sending documents to the *kindle* cloud still works now, and from what I was told by a customer service person at Amazon, nothing is going to change with that. What IS changing is the Cloud drive, which is more akin to Dropbox, and will allow you to store any and all different kinds of documents, and is NOT accessible from an e-ink Kindle.

If that's true, all is fine (at least for the way I use Amazon). The problem is, with everything connected, it's hard to tell what is "Cloud Drive" and what isn't.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Precisely, It's a business which exists to make money. If you don't like it, then save your pennies and get yourself a 2TB hard drive or whatever size you need and store everything on that. You just have to buy it once and it is under YOUR control.

Again, there's an implied contract. You buy the Kindle and -- as part of the deal -- you get to store your personal documents on our servers. Oops ... not any more. Looks like you fell for it -- idiot! Pretty pathetic way to treat your customers.

But if SendtoKindle documents still store in the Cloud (which is what some are saying) then that's the feature I understood was part of the deal when buying a Kindle. If that hasn't changed, then I'm not going to complain because I'm not really using the Cloud Drive (at least not specifically using it).

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by shalym

I don't know how many times I have to refer back to the fact that I was told directly by an Amazon employee, both on the phone and through email, that NOTHING IS CHANGING WITH REGARDS TO THE KINDLE CLOUD.

I'm not questioning that that's what you've been told but, unfortunately, I live in a world where customer service reps aren't always right. In this case, however, the evidence seems to indicate he/she is -- so that's great. But the word of one customer rep doesn't always hold a lot of weight. I'm more convinced by reports from users that their Send To Documents are still being stored online.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by caleb72

If I go to my cloud storage online and try to upload a file, it tells me I can't. The only way I can upload a file is to select a particular trial plan (which I won't do). However, if I use Send-to-Kindle with the option to save to the cloud, it still uploads to the Cloud account without issue.

Very happy to read this. Thanks.