Posted by captn3m0 12/19/2025
Apparently, during a recent review, they decided this counted as fraud and banned my account. As a result, I can no longer log in and lost access to all my Kindle e-books. They also remotely wiped my Kindle, so my entire library is gone. I appealed the decision, but I’ve been waiting for over six months with no resolution.
Edit - I don't mind paying for the service. Maybe charge everyone $99 to file a case to avoid everyone piling on, but it helps resolve most egregious ones, and fee could be refunded at the agency's discretion.
[Edit, because one-word replies are uncivilized: one reason to be suspicious about binding arbitration is that the company against whom you'll be pleading is a repeat customer of that arbitration service. It's a non-transparent / non-public process, so it's hard to have confidence is fair, and over which we (ie, the public) have no influence if it were not.]
Who is locked in by the contract. The arbitration company gets their fees no matter the outcome.
>so it's hard to have confidence is fair
You can appeal to a court if it's unfair.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers...
They are called courts and they exist.
Of course, companies like to require you to agree to binding arbitration, instead.
In this case, we're overdue for a service that we all pay into, like a collective credit card, that only continues making payments to companies like Amazon if all of the members are happy. When you get banned without due process, payments stop until the matter is resolved.
Also, the collective can bargain-down rates. If it senses price increases beyond inflation, it just sends the adjusted amount, like 95%, until the matter is resolved.
We need this collective bargaining for housing (like tenant unions), the workplace, politics, pharmaceuticals, etc. The scale of this is so large that the collective could exist beyond any specific industry. So that it would operate as a meta economy beside the so-called free market economy (late-stage capitalism) that we operate under today due to the lack of antitrust enforcement.
Groups like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) are working towards these sorts of goals on a number of fronts:
In that case, I appealed and was told, for the first time, that the reason for the refunds was that the card I'd been paying with didn't match the stored payment information saved to my account.
Both cards were equally valid and there was no indication anywhere that having saved payment information disqualified you from paying by any other method. As best I can tell, Blizzard just updated their policies one day for no particular reason, then made not complying with the new, secret policies a bannable offense.
The collateral damage on regular, innocent players is just an acceptable outcome.
Pirate it to start, and dont pay. You're an 'illegal' either way, with a tort copyright violation OR a criminal DMCA violation.
I was happy with Mullvad for a long time, especially being able to buy their scratch cards, but now I had to move to Proton due to the deprecation of port forwarding and openvpn at mullvad.
But PIA is american anyway so that won't work for me, I'm not signing up with new american services anymore since Trump came to power again.
So the correct advice would be to avoid anyone buying DRM-encumbered digital property - the same as RMS has been making for who knows how long!
Often not in my experience. Abe and B&N.
I believe Baen sells some DRM free sci fi books, but it's a smaller catalog.
I can imagine something like this has happened to almost everyone.
So much for being the world’s most customer-centric company. That mission is dead.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/about-us
> Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. We strive to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.
Those are big words Amazon certainly doesn't earn.
Fast forward a few months, I never received a refund and they claim they have no record any more. I could chargeback my credit card but I imagine I'd also be permanently banned from Amazon - so instead I accept they've just stolen $1000 from me with no recourse...
(if anyone from Amazon is reading this, my email is in my bio!)
To some this could imply they wanted to continue doing business with Amazon, so accepted the theft. Not losing access is, in a way, continuing to do business. Not sure if that's what they meant, but I can see it being interpreted as such.
But if they just close your account in response to asking for a rightful refund.... Literal thievery
I had to call them to get a refund for all the items on all the orders, and even then they had a lot of difficulty figuring out what was happening. Isn't Amazon supposed to be a world leader (maybe after Walmart) in this stuff?
Not sure what you'd do in such a scenario if they tried to fight it
Many people online share similar experiences. Wonder how much money this wide-scale fraud saves them.
Waiting a few months is not smart because not every delivery service is going to store the delivery status details. I've generally found that after 3 months, data starts disappearing from services and refund options can become technically impossible. Like, on eBay, even if a seller wants to refund you after more than 90 days, they can't. Part of this is for accounting too -- at some point you just have to be able to definitively close the books and say here are the sales we made, that number isn't going down in the future because of potential outstanding returns.
For a phone in particular I'd be demanding serial number/IMEI information for the police report and ensuring that the stolen phone was properly reported as stolen. Since they record all of that when they ship it should be readily available.
Whether you find higher quality in your local area depends on your local area and what you're buying. More generally applicable, you can find higher quality with independent online stores.
You can find 99% of the junk on amazon on aliexpress for a lower price, though without prime shipping.
It's not like you should feel bad about playing dirty with a company that considers it fine to just steal $1k.
Edit: If anyone knows a way to get them to unlock the account, I'd appreciate it. They won't issue a password reset or anything similar, which seems ridiculous considering they never claimed fraud. Simply that it had been too long since I logged in.
If you used to be one of those good consumers who would never even think of breaking DRM, I hope you reconsider it now.
I wish the CFAA were used to go after people like whoever at Amazon was responsible for that, instead of people like Aaron Swartz.
I doubt I would re-read many of them, but my partner is still going through some of them (with the family library thing).
I’d be pissed if it got wiped.
Soulseek is brilliant.
Can't you file a suit in a small claims court?
Facebook is marginally worse than the others because Facebook left you with no way to actually contact the friends you accrued https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433
Sue them.
This behavior genuinely earns them more of my business.
But I suppose when you get to the size of Amazon a million bans becomes a statistic...
At least Amazon is clear we don’t own the book.
Not sure if this legal or not, the cost of fraud in physical book purchasing (even if it's genuine) will probably never exceed the entire Kindle book library collection.
If this is true, I need to be extra careful buying stuff, virtual or physical from Amazon.
Though I highly doubt this alone was the reason for an account ban. Is it possible your credentials were stolen/misused without your knowledge?
> "Amazon.co.uk found that the rate at which refunds were occurring on your account was extraordinary and could not continue."
After looking through my order history, the only refund I could find on this account was the one related to the book I mentioned above. If there was any other activity or misuse, Amazon hasn’t disclosed it to me, which makes it impossible to verify or dispute their conclusion.
I'm not going to buy any more DRM content.
Might be worth trying.
I could have easily gotten a refund, but there was no way for me to say “I received the product!”
So bizarre.
I’m used to dedicating time to dealing with being screwed by random companies. But this doesn’t fit that description- so I don’t go too far out of my way.
What are you using for e-book reading now?
Unfortunately, it seems like this will be chosen by the publisher, so of course probably most of the books won't be downloadable at all, and Amazon can now point their finger at the publisher instead of taking the blame themselves. Publishers was probably always the reason behind the move, but at least now Amazon have someone else to blame, which I guess is great for them.
But after they decided the ebooks were actually just license to read, I did exactly the same as you, and now rather than happily buying from them, actively discourage everyone in my social circle from using kindle.
I am not going back, whoever they decide to blame.
They decided that when they launched the Kindle. It's always been that way.
Any interpretation of that transaction as anything but a purchase of a copy is delusional. I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it, any more than I'd care what a sign on the wall of a bookstore said.
Yes, it has. They made it clear right when they launched the store.
> I couldn't care less what their ToS said about it
You're welcome to not care about whatever you feel - your concerns and reality are orthogonal.
This became big news a long time ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
You seem to be missing the importance of that nuance.
OK:
https://goodereader.com/blog/kindle/amazon-changes-licensing...
"Amazon has revised the text when purchasing a Kindle e-book on its online store. You do not own the book you bought but are licensing it. It used to say “By clicking on above button, you agree to Amazon’s Kindle Store Terms of Use.”"
...
"This is not a policy shift from Amazon for the US; they are more upfront about it now. Amazon has always licensed the digital content to users, so anything purchased does not mean the user owns it, they just bought a license"
As the article points out, the change in verbiage was because of a new California requirement that this should be made explicit. It was always a license. They merely changed the verbiage on the button to conform to state rules.
Edit: I have to say, after a bunch of rather pointless arguments today and yesterday on HN, it disappoints me that the average commenter is quick to jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. Both times the facts were trivial to lookup.
Not the HN of yore.
Much more useful would have been if you had linked to an archive of the original Kindle Store Terms of Use, which state:
> Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.[0] (emphasis mine)
Notice that "or as authorized by Amazon" is part of the clause with "solely on the device," not a separate clause that somehow might be interpreted to apply to the "right to keep a permanent copy" part.
Does it also say that it is considered licensed to you? Sure. But the "license" is the "right to keep a permanent copy."
It's one thing for Amazon to say, "Shit, we sold you a book we weren't authorized to sell. We have to undo the whole transaction." It's quite another to do what the GGGGGGGP comment (I didn't count the G's) is complaining about and delete your permanent copy of a book for which they did validly sell you a license to keep a permanent copy.
Amazon has meaningfully changed the license agreement now. In 2025, it says:
> Use of Kindle Content. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you subject to the terms of this Agreement, including without limitation those in “Changes to Service; Amendments” below, a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through Kindle Software or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Kindle Software.[1]
They've eliminated the right to keep a permanent copy that was originally part of the license sold. That change matters. Deleting content sold under that license is a violation of the terms of the agreement on their part.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110109000847/http://www.amazon... [1]https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
No one except those who explicitly went looking for this knew it. It wasn't made clear in any way.
> This became big news a long time ago:
Speaking of orthogonal. I remember this well. It was a case where Amazon stole back books people had purchased. The core concern at the time wasn't that Amazon had revoked a license to read a book, but that they had deleted purchased books from users' collections.
But at the end of the day, for many years Amazon had an action button saying "Buy now with 1-Click" with no legal fiction disclaimer. The button was identical to what you'd see when buying a bag of cat food, DVD, or anything else you'd flat-out purchase from them.
What is silly is actually knowing the whole 1984 episode, and still believing you owned the books.
> Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase".
This has nothing to do with people's having bought a license to the books. It's about Amazon's never having had authorization from the publisher to sell the books. There is no reference at all to people's having licensed the books from Amazon. Amazon referred to people as having bought the books.
Or you can save yourself the bother of removing DRM by buying the book from wherever and then downloading a copy from Anna's.
Im kinda cheeky and use Amazons Send-to-Kindle service to send ebooks in epub format to my kindle via wifi
Also, I reduced the buying pace - owning physical books takes up space, so the bar for getting something into the library is now much higher than before.
I’m amazed to see so many comments focused on everything but libraries.
This isn't announcing that pdf's and epub's are now available for everything that was drm-free, this is announcing that they will _permit_ pdf's and epub's to be available.
It makes sense not to do this retroactively.
Edit: I now realize you might mean in the Amazon KDP UI. I don't see a way to upload your own.
We can understand why they do it this way (they only need the option to exist, and can afford to apply dark patterns to it), but we don't need to excuse Amazon. Especially when they don't give a shit about what we think in the first place.
I'm also not going to write off everything they do as evil only because of who they are though. Defaulting to disabled vs enabled would be reasonable too, though I don't know enough publishers or independent authors to know which option would be more often selected to pick a default.
1. Sell digital things, that costs as same as physical copy
2. Make it so that customer doesn't even own them
3. Profit (No question marks in between)
What a mess. I've mostly stopped Kindle/ebooks but I still have audible which seems like suffering from the same problem.
actually, many kindle books I have from years ago mention they have no drm at the request of the publisher.
...yet were distributed in DRM .azw format
I wonder how many books are actually DRM-free and are going to be affected by this change. I suspect relatively few, but I would be happy to be wrong
I've also purchased some books that are available as serials on the web for free.
I would imagine those publishers would be aligned with making them .epub
Even if I wanted to join, Kindle Unlimited is not offered here. I can't even buy the eBook from Amazon.
But I wonder if the reason for that little hoop was because of Kindle Unlimited.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OZ4NMHU
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Anyone-Builds-Everyone-Dies-Superhuma...
[1]: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/if-anyone-builds-it-everyon...
Since I couldn't refund, I had to pirate the book as epub/pdf from elsewhere. I decided to never again buy anything from Kobo.
No where legit is DRM free for eBooks from the big publishers. You don't even have to use the Kobo app since they let you download the ACSM file and use it Adobe Digital Editions which could be used on a computer or ADE supported eReader like Pocketbook (or Kobo!). This has been the case since before they were even called Kobo! And if the publisher offers the book DRM free they just give you a DRM-free ePub instead of the ACSM file.
These days, with the Calibre DeACSM and DeDRM plug-ins you don't even need ADE. It's also trivially easy to remove the DRM from the Kobo desktop app or their readers. It's way easier than Amazon and a way better experience with multiple routes to a DRM free file.
Their website didn't guide me towards a callable phone number or give me an actual e-mail address I could write to. Instead I went back and forth between chatbot and docs and webpages, without success. It is obvious to me, that they want as little actual human in the loop as possible. Real shitty experience, while my money is already gone and I am trying to get it back. Easier to give up and just download an acceptable version elsewhere. Not going through all that hassle to use their platform, which doesn't value me as a customer anyway.
ACSM is Adobe's crap and the same thing you'd have use for Google Play Books and a few others. It's again another slight step change where you have to open the ACSM with ADE to get the book in the first place. WTF Adobe did it that way, IDK but they did.
I buy like 60% of my ebooks from Kobo and have never owned a Kobo-brand ereader.
Kobo is not it. Maybe they once were, at some point before I tried using them. I am not gonna support them after my experience with them.
What is bizarre here is you posting these comments, trying to invalidate my all around terrible experience with Kobo. Your account is green behind the ears and all your comments are on Kobo, Kobo, Kobo. Go figure.
Personally I just buy my books DRM free now. If that's not possible, then I get them from my friend Anna who has a nice library.
And yes I have liberated all my DRM books from Amazon. But Adobe Digital I will never touch again (Nor buy books with DRM on it in the first place).
1. Install ADE on Windows (or a Windows VM (recommended))
2. Log in with Adobe account
3. Download ASCM files from Kobo or Google Play Books and open with ADE
4. the optional step I've been trying to hint at for like 3 posts now
5. Put it on your reader!
And as for removing the DRM (I assume that's what you're hinting at), yeah but that can be done with kindle's and kobo's too and in less roundabout ways. The existence of a hack for Adobe DRM doesn't make that a 'good' DRM.
The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.
"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")
Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.
I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)
I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.
Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.
What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.
I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.
Nah DRM and subscription models would have arrived even if there were no piracy. Subscription models because they guarantee income and most people use less than it's worth. And DRM because companies are paranoid.
In fact even now DRM serves no actual purpose other than harassing legitimate buyers. Pirates have no issue getting content and in the case of books they never will because copying can even be done by OCR.
Look I’m not saying “pirate everything and never pay the artists” - I’m saying “never pay the predatory tech companies that have inserted themselves between us and artists”
...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.
> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.
You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.
> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.
When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.
While lots public domain books are on Amazon's store, most of those books are not free, both in the sense of "free or charge" and "DRM free". A lot of literature classic are released by a major publishing house with foreword and annotations, which to be fair, are copyrighted works and provide value. And they cost a bit of money. The "real" public domain versions provide by Amazon are barebone. Those versions are often good enough for many people, but you don't need to get them from Amazon in the first place.
In other words, public domain or not does not have much to do with DRM-free or even Amazon.
In practice, the biggest store that doesn't have a DRM-free option is Audible... which has a near-monopoly on audiobooks. So Cory Doctorow has to do crowdfunding campaigns for all his audiobooks. Of course, that doesn't stop his books from getting illegally reposted to Audible anyway, and Amazon doesn't care about enforcing rights they can't have. Which led to him actually publishing this gem on Audible: https://www.amazon.com/Why-None-Books-Available-Audible/dp/B...
"Download options: EPUB 3 (Adobe DRM)": https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/enshittification-4
Kobo does sell some other books DRM-free, so perhaps this is some sort of error. You can buy it directly from the publisher without Adobe DRM, there it has a watermark instead.
So maybe it's screwup on the UK site.
I saw the writing on the wall and downloaded my books from Amazon a few months before their announcement. Out of around 1000 books I had 300ish that were DRM free.
The publisher/author will have to go through a process to have their books be downloadable again.
Now they could actually be distributed as unencrypted .epub
It looks like distribution in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (only?) is from the imprint Gollancz, who has decided to go with DRM versions.
Of course if they really believed in the concept they would publish their own works DRM-free, but that would conflict with the business model of the publishing arm.
Switched to a Boox, installed koreader, set up sync thing. It's insane how much better a reading experience this is
I picked a random book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/hemlock-silver-t-kingfisher/022...
It's DRM Free, and available as an ePub. Other than Kindle, what device does not accept ePub?
https://support.libro.fm/support/solutions/articles/48000695...
Example: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/gardens-of-the-moon
They've been doing this for YEARS before Amazon.
It's fine if it fits your need, but will be far from a good alternative in most regions.
For this feature alone, I'd never go back to Kindle. Sure, I might be able to replicate it with jailbreaking + KOReader. But the Kobo worked this way out of the box.
Because Amazon were increasingly locking-down their systems - and also because they are all-round shits - I decided to abandon the ecosystem having been a customer since the days they only sold books.
I have owned two Paperwhites, two Oasis devices, and a Kindle Scribe. I sold all of them last year and bought a Kobo Libra Colour.
I get WAY more joy from reading on the Kobo. I love buying books from the Kobo store (yes I know they also have DRM) - and I'm buying and reading WAY more on the Kobo than I was at the end of my time with Amazon.
Every time I buy yet another book on the Kobo Store I feel the thrill of sticking it to the horrible, anti-user shits at Amazon.
I have a Kobo Clara BW. It's still a great machine, but the Kindle is definitely superior for feel and visuals, but I use the Kobo 95% of the time. They are way more open with the software and I have mine in "sideload" mode (an official setting), which really just means that it doesn't make me log into anything and it doesn't even attempt to connect to the internet. Also, I can purchase a DRM free ebook on the train, plug a USB cable into my phone and my Kobo, and then load it on like that. Now I own my digital book, have supported the author with a larger margin, and get to read it on my more private machine.
Definitely not a no-brainer for everyone, but I'm happy with my Kobo.
Kobo feels like something I actually own. More so than Kindle or even my iDevices. That's a little unusual these days from a mainstream product and that will make its users enthusiastic.
Asking people to verify that they are honest will never help you. Dishonest people will of course lie to you and say they are honest. While honest people will be insulted by your question and not want to engage with you.
What you can do is verify. Try a Kobo, try a Kindle. Make up your own mind.
It would be great too to bring that information back to HN and share it with us.
What I found disappointing was when I had to swap out the screen on the Kobo and found that it was glued and that the battery was soldered. I managed to do fix it, but I don't like things that are unnecessarily hard to fix.