While I've been feeling quite a lot of 'Amazon is just AWFUL' for awhile, I'd been buying Kindle ebooks for a LONG time, and this series (The Frontiers Saga) is one of my regular recurring purchases, but I'm going to vent a bit about what Amazon just did to a bunch of their customers as a justification for my thesis that Ryk Brown ought start publishing on Kobo as well...
Many moons ago, I bought a fancy new-fangle e-reader: The second generation Kindle, sometimes known as the Kindle 2. I've been a paper books guy most of my life, and I was a little leery of 'not paper' at first. Truth be told, re-drawing the screen was slow and stuttery, the device wasn't that fast, it was pricey and in places like the beach water while it had always been an issue became a more EXPENSIVE issue. But dmn could you load up twenty books on the thing and take it on a plane or on vacation and have everything you could reasonably want to read fit in a small footprint at comparative feather-weight and that alone was a strong sell, despite the initial investment. I was promised free cell service with 'whispersync' to be able to download anything from my library, for LIFE, and between that and the fact that the ebooks were slightly cheaper than the paper books things were looking up.
Over the next year or so, my wife developed a taste for the device and had me buying books for it and eventually I heard about the larger-screen Kindle DX that was to make newspapers and textbooks feasible and be more useful for people with poor eyesight. I started socking away my pennies and eventually dropped a staggering $400-450 on the device and a third-party leather cover for it (because Amazon did not have one for the device at launch, believe it or not, and not ruining the screen on a bit of expensive kit was pretty much a prerequisite. I gave my wife the Kindle2 (still tied to my account) and switched to the DX for my everyday carry. It featured speakers and could play MP3s too (a novelty that was tested and then quickly abandoned as they are MUCH larger than ebooks and storage space is constrained), as well as mail-to-device of PDFs, which was neat as a lot of work-related whitepapers and tech docs were available in that format.
Things went well for a period of time until late 2021 or early 2022 (I cannot now remember the precise date) when they withdrew their 'for LIFE' cell support. There was an excuse about the carrier dropping 3G support, but having twice replaced a battery for the devices I could swear they sported what looked like replaceable cell modules on the interior near aforementioned batteries, so replacing those with a 4G cell card ought have been possible, no? They claim no.
That left me with ONLY an annoying workaround where I find the secret nobody-can-navigate-to-it-but-maybe-google-knows-where-it-is 'manage your digital content and devices' URL and periodically click 'other' 'download and transfer via USB' then pick the SPECIFIC device I want to load the book on from a popup to download each purchase ONE AT A TIME, sorting by kindle, and then plug them in and copy to each device for them to gain access to the books again. It was slow and annoying, and if I downloaded a purchase and forgot which device it was for before I got around to the manual copy process they went on but did not appear in the menu on-device. It was annoying, and inconvenient, but again 'relative featherweight' footprint easy on the eyes with great multi-book capacity, so it was tolerable.
Well, February 13, 2025 I got an email from Amazon informing me that as of February 26, 2025 they were removing the download and transfer capability. Less than two weeks notice that they were effectively taking a virtual ball-peen hammer remotely to my perfectly good, working, quite expensive e-Readers. For no reason - They ALREADY had built the 'workaround' manual transfer capability and they aren't going to be shutting down their webservers, I am certain. They have the money I paid for the hardware and the money I paid for all those books, but I can't use the two together anymore. I was incensed.
After wandering around their site for a bit looking for support options for a not-super-recent purchase and Kindle-specific support, I wended my way through multiple support staff on the phone as I wandered from 'wrong group' to 'wrong group' until eventually I was talking to the Kindle support staff bout an issue they 'had not received calls about' previously. Well, what with the passive discouragement of contact about their dictate from on high that my working devices were no longer allowed to work I wasn't exactly surprised, but still I thought *someone* would have called besides myself.
After explaining several times why 'You shut down the cell service and then you shut down the manual copy workaround with VERY little notice' was a problem and explaining that I would NOT be switching to reading off a tiny cell phone screen and that a backlit laptop screen was similarly awful at night when the ambient light is near-zero and the backlight doesn't go low enough they proudly proclaimed that I could still use any WiFi-capable Kindles and after a quick facepalm I reiterated that I did not OWN any WiFi-capable Kindles and that I would now never buy one from them again. In fact, unless they reversed course it was quite likely I would never buy an EBOOK from them again, and I was rethinking Prime to boot at this point.
And the tale might have ended there, but I decided I would try and be clever. I searched the Internet to find the oldest Kindle that had WiFi and found 2 generations newer it arrived in the Kindle 4. Amazon sure as hell wasn't getting paid for a new device, but if an older used one was fine, then paying some random stranger in the midwest for their old Kindle would be fine!
Well, as usual, the whims of Amazon dictated things were not actually as presented. I received my old Kindle4 today and after I connected it to WiFi I got an unhelpful error message about not being able to connect. After three updates, manually, over USB file copy one-at-a-time-then-menu-select 'update' this behavior changed. The registration still fails (OTP to phone# even when your account has OTP 2FA disabled and the device software deliberately does not allow to enter the OTP but now the store tells me (I paraphrase): 'Sorry! Your kindle is old, so go pound sand!'
So at this point I'm done. I'm not buying a new kindle. I'm not buying another secondhand USED kindle. I'm not buying ebooks from Amazon anymore after repeated instances of bad-faith actions to drive constant device sales have convinced me the company cannot be trusted and must not receive any more of my money. I don't know how many formerly loyal customers are seeing red and deciding to cut them off, but I hope it's a lot of them. They treat their customers poorly, and I've read things that make me think the same is true of the authors. 'Join our walled garden and we'll pay you more' followed by 'sorry, that doesn't cover the rate for unlimited borrowing we implemented without your agreement'.
And THAT is my case for not being Amazon exclusive. I signed up for Kobo (they sell an e-Ink reader too, but I wanted to see if the content I wanted was on sale there (It appears not); There is some OLD Frontiers Saga ebook content available but nothing recent. I would buy the books as released from Kobo or even paperback (but not at Amazon) but if the content is walled garden, as of February 26 it is unfortunately dead to me.
( </rant> lol)
Went back to look at what WAS on Kobo and realized everything I saw there was (old) audiobook, not ebook content for the series.
Presumably what's still available there predates the Kindle-only decision and was permitted to remain when the corresponding ebooks went away? Regardless, mea culpa - There are NO Frontiers ebooks on Kobo currently.
Many of your gripes about Amazon are legitimate and I agree. However, I work in wireless and have for almost 40 years going back to analog service. 3G was eliminated by the wireless carriers around 2020 or so. This is a gradual progression that occurs with every transition to new technology. It's not an excuse by Amazon. The larger providers have multiple licenses in different frequency bands. A new tech like 4G would have started on just one band and gradually transitioned over a few years as customers replaced older 3G devices for the new 4G. The same is happening now with 4G/5G and 6G is on the horizon.
My wife has a Kindle Fire that I use to purchase and read Ebooks. It's probably 5 years old and only works on WiFi. It makes a fine reader and basic tablet. It's backlit, but brightness is adjustable. I often read in the dark with it and have no issues myself so long as it's not super bright. The first Kindle was released 2007 with new models every couple of years. These are relatively cheap devices that are not worth the expense of trying to make them modular and technology proof.
My personal experiences with Amazon are generally positive.
@03121209
I have personally self-replaced the batteries in my kindle e-ink readers and can confirm the cell service was delivered via a replaceable riser card in at LEAST the DX. Similar to how a lot of laptop systems have riser slots for cell service and\or WiFi\BT (possibly combo cards). They could absolutely have dropped a software update that enabled replacement with a swap of the riser card for a newer 3G or 4G card. I would have paid for the hardware, given the option. Either they wanted to drive the endless hardware replacement of endless 'new Kindle hardware' or (as I suspect is the case) they have an alternate unstated motive.
The Kindle 4 I picked up used from eBay has WifI and after flashing the software to current the errors got a little more honest... Rather than generic 'service is unavailable' errors trying to register the device (and their FAQs mention reset\re-register as a diagnostic method) and a 'marketplacve unavailable' it switched to a 'service unavailable' error trying to register and a splash page when you launch the marketplace saying, in essence, "So long and thanks for all the fish". That is, there IS connectivity but they've disabled registration and the marketplace in direct contradiction to their stated continued support. So wired or wireless, support was killed for a swath of the older hardware, and this included the Download & transfer facility that was a mildly annoying but serviceable workaround. Obviously, this had nothing to do with the cell service generation\spectrum, else the marketplace for the Kindle 4 wouldn't be deliberately disabled, nor the D&T USB file downloads, nor the device registration. Some other 'need' is being addressed, and much as with everything else they feel no need to explain why to customers when they arbitrarily change the terms of their 'deal' with us.
Now, I may be in a minority here, but I find backlit screens cause me eye strain, particularly in low-light conditions, which is mostly the environment I do recreational reading in, and so have never considered switching to their 'Kindle fire' line (now just 'Fire', evidently) and don't plan on it, ever.
I don't blame the minions for what the [EXPLETIVE] overlords at corporate are doing - I blame the overlords. You know, the same people that added a "Mayday button" on the Kindle Fire tablets to bypass the terrible support experience, and then killed that service too. There was a time when they delivered newspapers and things like 'new Sci Fi and fantasy' newsstand items, and they killed that. Probably so that it wouldn't undercut their subscription service some time later. See, the thing is with Amazon you cannot rely on any service, offering, promise, or even the hardware... Because they pull the back-end support at will. And refuse to ever say WHY they are killing a service. Like, ever.
And that's the thing, right there. They don't care what I think, they sure as hell aren't going to refund me for my hardware they remotely disabled, and it's become evident they can't be trusted to act in good faith. So I can't continue to fund this sort of behavior. I'm still trying to talk myself out of buying the last couple of Frontiers books and forcing myself to read it on a laptop, which I may still do, but when the story Arc finishes I can say with certainty I will never buy another ebook through Amazon, ever.
I've even been reflecting on whether I am angry enough about this whole process to drop prime altogether, and while I'm not as sure as 'never again' for ebooks, I may still decide that this something I can do without, yes. I've had some less-that-satisfactory dealings with other companies (Sony, Disney) and when I'm annoyed enough I decide I'm not buying from them anymore I DO stick to it. Am I that upset? Well, I'm definitely 'quit Kindle' upset. Am I 'quit Amazon' upset? I don't know. I have relatives living hundreds of miles away I send gifts to every year, mostly direct from Amazon. Is their forced obsolescence egregious enough to get me buying those gifts elsewhere and then wrapping and shipping via UPS? Mmmmmaybe? The extra time and effort come at a cost, in time, effort, and actual money spent. I'm not sure yet that I'm willing to follow through on that, but it's definitely possible. The 'buying stuff' experience with Amazon was always solid, but that does NOT extend to Amazon-branded hardware or 'digital items' which, it turns out, are actually long term rentals they can break on me with no notice. It's left such a bad taste in my (metaphorical) mouth that I'd much rather buy paperbacks now through Alibris than ever do another ebook through Amazon and just pick what's going into the suitcase on vacation more carefully.
