Amazon Makes Amends for Kindle Bungle

It was about two months ago when Kindle users, Amazon’s e-book reader, who downloaded George Orwell’s novels experienced having them mistakenly deleted by the people at Amazon themselves. This was due to Amazon’s discovery that certain versions of Orwell’s famous novels, notably, Animal Farm and 1984, were added into Kindle’s library by an unauthorized publisher and were illegally downloaded.

Informing the Kindle users who may have downloaded them and then asking for some form of consideration would have worked quite fine. But Amazon did something that many Kindle users objected to- deciding to delete the mentioned novels from the Kindle libraries of users without informing them before doing it.

That move alone would look unfair already to those people who paid for and downloaded the supposed unauthorized versions of the novels unknowingly. Their surprise led to disgust and a wave of complaints and criticism for how Amazon generally handled the situation in a move that seems to give them control over what Kindle users can and cannot download. The problem with the move is that the Kindle users who downloaded the novels paid for them only to find out later that Amazon has deleted them from their libraries.

Now what would those who were affected thing that it took the company about two months to acknowledge their mistake openly and offer amends? Amazon’s CEO sent out emails to Kindle users who were affected by the mistake and offered either a gift certificate or a check for US$ 30. That would sure help ease the minds of the affected Kindle users. But forgetting the episode would be something highly unlikely.

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