Hi, friends!
So I’ve been stumped by my 2016 Kindle for about a week. I was reading for the umpteenth time one of my favorite series. When I closed it out to return to my Kindle library, the whole series (like 9 books) is missing. A bunch of other books by the same author? Still there.
Did the restart thing. No luck. Went to the managed content for kindle and removed it, then re-downloaded it. Nope, still not showing. Another restart. Goddamnit I’m probably gonna have to factory reset the damn Kindle and download 300+ books again.
So. Amazon customer support. It’s been about 90 minutes and no help. I think I’m just fucked and need to factory reset the thing.
I don’t know what I expected, but this has been beyond useuless.
I live in fear of just such a scenario.
The call went even longer. I was writing the post during it.
Anyways, I didn’t factory reset. I did deregister and reregister. Which meant technically my library is still there but absolutely everything has to be downloaded again.
By then it was close to the time I needed to go to bed and I was like fuck it I can’t deal with downloading all this stuff again tonight.
Amazon is just awful. Customers are about the 27th thing down the line as far as their priorities, pretty much neck and neck with their employees.
Can’t say I have that problem thanks to my steadfast use of…books.
Well, it’s the first issue I’ve ever had with a device I bought in 2016, can’t claim the same for any work laptop I’ve ever had, or either of my last 2 cars, or my house foundation, etc etc.
Unfortunately some of the authors I like only publish ebooks, so I’m kinda stuck.
That is the real problem with e-books — in certain formats (Kindle being the primary example), you never really own them, even though you paid for them.
I’ve been through something similar, so I empathize and wish you all the luck in getting your library back. It’s super-frustrating, and yes, Amazon’s customer service is not the best. I hope this doesn’t stray into the weekend for you. Please keep us posted.
One of the great things about my city’s library is they are still keeping at least one hard copy of most books… somewhere. Maybe they have a warehouse somewhere? I don’t know. On a few occasions I’ve hunted down 50 year old books, not even super popular ones, and they’ve had a copy.
It’s nowhere near as extensive a collection as the Library of Congress, but it’s surprisingly good, and I’m glad that there are librarians who still get how important hard copies are.
Same reason why I tend to avoid downloading music and buy CDs instead. The digital licensing issues are such a hassle that it’s not worth it to me to “buy” a license to a product that can get removed at any time. If I’m going to buy something I want to buy the thing, not the license to use the thing.
I don’t buy a lot of music, but agreed I still by the actual CDs too. I can easily burn it to my laptop ease of use.
I will buy MP3s, but only the ones that I can physically download as unencrypted files to my PC. That way I own “physical” copies that can be stored on my external hard drive as well as multiple thumb drives.
iTunes can fuck right off with their shit-assery. Bandcamp rules, and Amazon actually allows downloads for music (unlike books), so I have something to show for my spending if that’s the only place I can get files.
I recently had a customer service experience with my internet provider that was so good it took my breath away.
It ended up with me saving $220 bucks a month, improving my speeds by 3x and raising my data cap to virtually unlimited. Remember, I live in a very rural mountainous area, so internet service has been a constant problem. I was just on the verge of quitting my provider and switching to Melon Husk’s Starlink out of desperation and this rep brought me back from the edge. And this is not a company known for excellent customer service.
I have never seen anything like this.
That’s fucking awesome!
Are you in a region where there’s RDOF government money to get fiber internet to people?
Supposedly, but the fiber hasn’t made it up the mountain yet.
My current service is not ideal, and nothing like a good fiber plan, but it’s light years ahead of where I was.
It takes ONE good service rep. I hope you got their name.
Things like this always remind me of that scene from the The Incredibles where Mr. Incredible whispers to the woman with a complicated insurance claim, or Brazil where Robert De Niro crashes in and manages to fix the broken down heating systems.
Oh yes, and I wrote a nice letter on her behalf.
ATT is the bane of my existence.
My parents have the same ATT phones they’ve had since 1973, all run on copper landlines.
They keep coming out and trying to give them internet. These 80 year old people do not need the internet. My dad has a flip phone for emergencies. That is the extent of the technological advances at their house.
One of my favorite running jokes is how much John Oliver fucking hates AT&T.
Unrelated to anything, but a sweet story, that shows that not *all* of reddit is a racist-incel-filled-hellhole;