They have certainly lost me as a potential Kindle user. I was considering buying myself a Kindle for Christmas, but that's not going to happen now. I thought Amazon could be trusted with my money, but it's clear that it's too risky.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone higher up sees her issues and activates her account. But I can't trust my money to a company where you could lose access to books worth thousands if you talk with the wrong person.

It's not like they don't have form. In 2009 they erased all the versions of 1984 from all Kindles, to massive uproar.

Back then, they said "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances". Looks like 3 years later they've decided to go back to what they were doing and promised not to do.

And THIS is why I won't buy a Kindle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...

At least they gave these people their money back..

Ironic that it was 1984.

Fahrenheit 451 would have been better.

Haven't read that one yet. Damn you for putting it on my list.

> I was considering buying myself a Kindle for Christmas, but that's not going to happen now.

You can still treat yourself with one of the many currently sold ebook readers out there: http://www.the-ebook-reader.com/ebook-reader-comparison.html . There is a world out there of (electronic) books that is not controlled by Amazon.

Every week there is a story in the UK press about how company A is not paying tax in the UK. This is not unique to Amazon.

Vodafone, Amazon, Starbucks, Google, Apple, ...

Most are setup to use a double irish scheme, and usually throw in the dutch sandwich: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_sandwich

These schemes are relevant to corporate income tax, which can be manipulated and avoided. VAT applies to pretty much all revenue regardless of how you structure your company ownership structure.

Reminds me of the nice Starbucks joke from last week:

I like my women like I like my coffee - paying tax on their income in the UK.

There's a twist in asking customers to pay 20%, and taking that from the authors, and then (according to GP) not paying the 20% in England but paying just 3% in some other country.

VAT is not the same as corporation tax.

In the UK, Amazon is being accused of not paying the full amount of corporation tax they ought to be paying.

This sounds fraudulent.

You can be quite sure that the contract is not phrased in such a way that Amazon is required to pay 20% VAT on the ebooks in question to the UK government.

Is it sleazy as all getout? Yup, absolutely: but it's not illegal. Companies pull this kind of bait and switch all the time when they think they can get away with it. Remember when Microsoft bought the original Internet Explorer codebase in return for the company in question receiving a cut of the profits and then gave it away for free? How they must have laughed about that one back at MS HQ...

In reality, the publishers handed Amazon a near monopoly on ebook sales by their own short-sightedness and now Amazon is turning the thumbscrews to see how much they're actually prepared to cough up. The games with VAT in the contract are just part and parcel of that.

> How they must have laughed about that one back at MS HQ...

Until they lost the lawsuit...

http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/news2/microsoft-and-spyg...

Vodaphone's shenanigans so they only paid £1.2bn of the estimated £6bn total tax bill also sounds well dodgy.

It's funny that then people give out about small countries that have lower coporation tax (e.g. Ireland). If companies in "non-low-tax" countries like UK don't pay any tax, why give out to low-tax countries?

Not that taxes are out of control in the UK or anything...

Elaborate please?

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/ Used and new books. Free Shipping Worldwide.

"Better World Books is a self-sustaining, for-profit social venture whose mission is to capitalize on the value of the book to fund literacy initiatives locally, nationally and around the world. We partner with nearly 1400 libraries and over 1800 college campuses across the U.S. and Canada, collecting unwanted textbooks and library discards in support of non-profit literacy programs. We have raised millions of dollars for literacy, saved millions of books from landfills, created jobs for hundreds of people, and provided wonderful books to millions of readers worldwide."

Waterstones used to use Amazon to sell books (presumably they couldn't make any money any other way). Not sure if they still do.

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/ is pretty good, particularly for difficult to find and second hand books. I've found more and more recently that play.com does almost as well as (and often better than) Amazon in terms of price, although I don't know much about their business tactics.

AbeBooks is actually owned by Amazon now.

Seriously? Wow. Amazon really are dominating that particular market.

From AbeBooks' web site:

AbeBooks Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. AbeBooks, an online bookselling pioneer, was acquired in December 2008 and remains a stand-alone operation with headquarters in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and a European office in Dusseldorf, Germany.

http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation

I'm a fan of foyles[1] and their selection and prices are quite good.

[1]http://www.foyles.co.uk/

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll do some price/terms comparisons. I don't mind paying a small premium to support an independent. Or I may try just ordering books at the Waterstones near where I work, and having them delivered there. The current owner of Waterstones seems to actually like and value books [1].

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/james-daun...

I find The Book Depository good, but I don't really know if they're good or evil. They're very pleasant doing business with, though.

The Book Depository is owned by Amazon too :)

Ugh, I had no idea. Thanks for informing me!