Amazon have closed a customers account with them, deleted all her paid for ebooks and refuse to discuss it.

According to Norwegian Blogger Martin Bekkelund (link to his blog below) this is what has just happened to a friend of his.

Please note:

Before going any further, I have to state that I only have Mr Bekkelund’s word that all of the following history actually happened, please bear this in mind as you read on.

Important update:

Since I wrote this post, I have heard that Amazon have relented and returned all her ebooks and all is now well.  I can only assume that a few knuckles in the Amazon administration have been firmly slapped and been told that this is no way to handle clients – or at least I hope this is the case.

I am forced to wonder if this apparent turn about by Amazon is the result of sensible customer relations, or rather a result of the very considerable bad publicity that Amazon was getting as lots of influential bloggers took up this story, and spread the word.  We shall of course never know

Here follows a sad history of corporate inflexibility and strangely unhelpful behaviour.

Apparently what happened is that his friend discovered one fine day that all the ebooks in her Kindle ereader had disappeared without trace, so not unnaturally she shot an email off to Amazon to ask them if they knew anything about this.

This produced an email from a certain Mr. Murphy in which he stated the following:-

My name is Michael Murphy and I represent Executive Customer Relations within Amazon.co.uk. One of our mandates is to address the most acute account and order problems, and in this capacity your account and orders have been brought to my attention.

We have found your account is directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies. As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and any open orders have been canceled.

Per our Conditions of Use which state in part: Amazon.co.uk and its affiliates reserve the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit content, or cancel orders at their sole discretion.

Please know that any attempt to open a new account will meet with the same action.

You may direct any questions to me at resolution-uk@amazon.co.uk.

Thank you for your attention to this email.

Regards

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

This confused her, as she had never had any other account with Amazon, and especially not with Amazon UK, as her account was with Amazon.com (The USA branch). So she sent another email off to Mr. Murphy – understandably:-

Dear Michael Murphy,

I am very surprised to read your email. What do you mean by “directly related to another which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies”. I can only remember ever having this one account, and I use it quite regularly to buy books for my Kindle, as you probably can see by my purchase history. How can there suddenly be a problem now? I use amazon.com and not co.uk for my Kindle, does that make any difference?

I sincerely hope you can help me solve this matter, because I would very much like to have my account reopened. And please let me know if there is any action I can take to help.

Best regards,

One would imagine that this email would result in an email with some hard information about the problem, but nope… what she received was the following email:-

As previously advised, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed, as it has come to our attention that this account is related to a previously blocked account. While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened.

Please understand that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision.

I appreciate this is not the outcome you hoped for and apologise for any disappointment this may cause.

Regards,

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.co.uk

In a faintly desperate attempt to get some information and resolution to this apparently intractable problem, she sent off yet another email:-

Dear Michael Murphy,

Is it correct that you cannot give me any information about
1. How my account is linked to the blocked account
2. The name/id of the related blocked account
3. What policy that was violated

I have no knowledge about any other account that could be related to mine, and cannot understand how I could have violated your policies in any way.

Once again, the man from Amazon refused to budge and replied with the following email:-

We regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. Unfortunately, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters.

Thank you for your attention to this email.

Regards

Michael Murphy
Executive Customer Relations

And this is where the situation currently rests, as the poor Norwegian lady has given up any hope of either resolving the situation with Amazon, or ever seeing all the ebooks she paid good money to buy from Amazon in the first place.

In passing I would comment that if Mr. Murphy is really in charge of customer Relations, then Amazon UK seem to have a problem on their hands.   If he really regrets this action as much as he repeatedly professes, surely he would at least talk to the poor soul?

This sad story raises several issues, firstly the thorny matter of who actually owns the ebooks we pay good money for. Well legally this is simple, the ebook seller owns the ebooks, all we own is a license to read them on our ereader, so effectively we have hired the ebooks, much like when we rent a DVD from a shop, with the only difference being that we may keep the ebook for as long as we wish, or as in this case, the ebook seller decides they want it back.

I agree this is a lousy situation, and needs to be changed so that we actually own the ebooks we buy, but currently with all DRM protected ebooks, that is the situation.

So if this story is actually true, Amazon have not broken any laws, or “stolen” her ebooks, they have merely canceled her license to read them, and taken them back. Perfectly legal, but lousy customer relations to put it mildly.

The second point it raises is how can we protect our expensive collection of ebooks from such actions on the part of the ebook sellers?

This is happily a very simple matter, simply copy all the ebooks you buy onto a computer hard disk, find a DRM stripping program,and remove the DRM cover from your ebooks (strictly speaking this last is illegal, but what the hell).

Then, should you lose your ereader, or are the victim of a similar action on the part of your ebook seller, you can thumb your nose at them, and simply copy your ebooks from your computer back into your ereader.  But keep the WiFi or 3G connection switched off, otherwise they will simply wipe all your ebooks again…

As a last thought, I am bemused as to why Amazon felt it necessary to remove all her properly paid for ebooks.  Close her account and refuse to do any more business with her if they wish, but to take back all her ebooks like that with no offer of compensation seems totally unreasonable to me.

One thing that puzzles me about this whole story is the apparent refusal of Amazon to enter into any useful discussions with the poor lady. This seems stupid and counterproductive, to say the least. Why not discuss it for God’s sake?

With thanks to Michael Evans of Macfilos for pointing me at this story.

Link to Martin Bekkelund’s Blog: http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/

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