That's not a hack. Customer support just doesn't want to argue with people who are likely to get belligerent. You can get a lot of stuff for free just by throwing a tantrum, but is that really who you want to be?

> Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

It's not far off a hack. And not OP but personally I've got very few problems with getting one over on massive corporations like Amazon.

It's about as ingenious as littering to save yourself a 20 second walk to a trash can.

I disagree. It's exploiting a weakness in customer service provision in order to work around built-in UX degradation. Not many people would think of it.

Our society can only exist because people don't push the boundaries of what is technical legal but still harmful to others. There are also many laws you can break without any risk of getting caught. It has to be that way because we can only invest a limited amount of our resources into enforcement of our laws. It's one big prisoner's dilemma where individuals gain by defecting but if too many people defect on the social contract the whole system falls apart.

Likewise, businesses lose money on people who habitually return things. People who behave reasonably subsidize the "ingenious" minority. Generous warranty and return policies can only exist when most people behave reasonably.

> push the boundaries of what is technical legal but still harmful to others

This is actually a good description the behaviour of megacorps like Amazon. They are constantly looking for new ways to increase and consolidate market share, pushing or breaking the boundaries of anti-trust regulations, at the expense of the consumer.

I wouldn't advocate this sort of behaviour towards individuals or small businesses, only megacorps. Highly dubious that this would actually cause harm to the average person. If anything it would hasten the enshittification process, open the field up to competition, and be a net positive for society.

I am likely coming at this from an entirely different mindset to you. In my mind, the current economic structure implies that sufficiently large corporations are pitched in a battle against ordinary people.

It's not a weakness, it's Amazon's strategy to be generous in customer support to ensure loyal customers.

not so - they will fight you on the ad removal most of the time

Also works to say that you live in a country where Kindles aren't officially sold so you can't make use of the ads anyway even if you wanted to. Don't know if they actually check if you are in one of those countries, but I am so it worked for me.

This was, arguably, a huge driver for Kindle sales in such countries (mine included), as that $20 or whatever saved made much more of a difference for people there.

YMMV, I paid for a no ad version of the Kindle and when I moved countries and changed the kindle store I stated receiving ads. After a 5 minute online chat they removed the ads again, but not before confirming my original purchase of the ad free kindle PW 10 in 2018.