Goodbye Amazon. It was nice doing business with you while it lasted.

If you have not read my previous post: Amazon is Holding my Kindle Hostage! it will help with understanding this post.

It took a week for me to get the charges cleared up between Amazon and my credit card company and then another few days that went by before I felt the need to make a call to Amazon to get them to release the hold on my account. During that period of time we had no access to any of the books, movies, apps or other digital content that we had purchased over the course of 14 years as pretty faithful Amazon users nor did we have access to any of the devices associated with our Amazon account. Our Kindles, Fire TV, Echos, etc. were all unusable.

The time we spent as loyal customers meant nothing to Amazon. Other than a half-hearted apology from the supervisor that I ended up forcing on the phone to get our account reinstated there was no other real response from Amazon at all about the situation we found ourselves in. While that is one of the things I should probably expect because of their size I guess I still have that desire to be considered a valued customer with the respect and courtesy that deserves.

In my previous post I mentioned that you no longer have access to any of the devices that you had associated with your Amazon account. It is actually a bit worse than that. Essentially what Amazon does when they lock out your account is to remove all of the registrations for the devices that you have purchased over the years. What this really means is this; not only will you no longer have access to anything you purchased you will also no longer have access tot he devices at all until you reregister them. Also, if you expected to login to your Kindle afterward and pick up where you left off in a book, you are sadly mistaken. None of your books will automatically download and your device no longer has any information about which book you were reading most recently or which page you were on. On a semi bright-side Amazon does keep track of the latest page read...at least up to the point where you were last able to sync.

Expect that anything associated with your Amazon account will require a considerable amount of time to get registered and configured again. What's your time worth? This is their additional tax on messing with their payments in any way regardless of the situation.

Taking a look at the financial aspect of this I would have to say that Amazon did me a favor. I have always been one of those old fashioned guys that believes that your customers are what makes you a success. As large as Amazon has gotten it is unlikely that the loss of my personal and business purchases will result in much of an impact to them. However, I believe it is a fundamental responsibility of all consumers to put their foot down and hold firm if they are not treated with the respect and consideration they deserve as paying customers. In these times it is really easy for a large technical company to have automated processes that don't take the customer's feelings into consideration. I wholeheartedly believe this is the case for Amazon. Unfortunately for them I'm a sensitive and emotional being that feels a need for a bit more of a tender touch (really, I am... Just don't ask my wife or kids...) at least if you want to keep my business.

Bottom line is; I will keep my account open with Amazon because I am required to in order to keep my devices running. I will likely still make some purchases with them but those purchases will be rare and I will do my best to find an alternate and, preferably, local resource to make those purchases. Gone are the days of looking at lightning deals and making purchases I did not always need just because it was so easy.

I have already taken the steps to backup all our Kindle books and will continue to do that as my way of keeping my purchases regardless of my Amazon account status. I love technology and feel that home automations are a wonderful thing but I think there needs to be limits on the ability for a company to be able to compromise your legitimately purchased products from years ago just because they don't like what you are doing today.

Bring on stricter anti-trust laws baby!