Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Amazon Bans Customer Who Bought Flawed Gadget

Liz Klimas reports on how a malfunction in a well-used e-reader caused a satisfied, paid-up customer to be banned from Amazon:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/why-did-amazon-close-a-womans-account-and-delete-all-her-kindle-books/

Yet another reason to buy real books, Gentle Readers. If you can't afford all the real books you need and "buying," or renting, cheaper e-books seems likely to help you earn the grades you deserve, I suggest buying only books by dead authors in e-format, and printing them out so you can keep them as long as you need them. All electronic gadgets will eventually become toxic waste--most within two or three years--and now it seems that your credit may actually be adversely affected when your e-gadgets break down.

Was Amazon altogether unreasonable to blame this customer for her electronic gadget's glitch? Not necessarily. When electronic gadgets are linked, a malfunction in one device may cause costly malfunctions in other devices. Blaming customers for maintaining links to the company may not be the best customer service policy (as Amazon eventually decided)...still, everybody would have been better off if this customer had used her Amazon account to buy real books.

Living writers get a better deal from publishers when you buy their books, preferably new, or failing that as Books You Can Buy From Me, in real-world printed format. And you get a better deal, because it's a rare thing for a book owned by an adult to become unusable during that adult's lifetime, and nobody's going to blame you if you do manage to wear out a real book. And a real book doesn't increase your consumption of electricity...if you read a lot, buying real books is better for the Earth.

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