Amazon kindle’s PPQ - A Personal Vendetta!

(If you are reading this, please post a link on your FB page or tweet it out when you’re done. You’ll understand why by the time you finish reading. – Thank You)

Product quality, more than innovation, is the cornerstone of any successful product and business. Without it, no matter how innovative or convenient the products might be, they ultimately end up being a major inconvenience for the end-user. This is a real life story of bad quality and its real life repercussions (with a bit of humor between the lines).

Even though in the past I misjudged Apples iPad calling it a super-sized iPod (I had never seen, much less touched, one when I wrote about it), I can definitely say I had to eat my words. The iPad is convenient, fun to use, and yes, RELIABLE! The Amazon kindle (yes, it does not deserve a capital ‘k’), well that’s a different story.

As I write this, I have now experienced my third kindle failure. All three failed the same way; the screen froze and became unreadable (see Picture). The first one was a gift my son received and we never purchased a cover for it. It quickly became a highly convenient item since we were able to add some of his school books on there. When the screen went bad I assumed that he mishandled it (i.e.: something impacted the screen, although I found it was odd that there was no surface impact marks).

Assuming my son had damaged it we decided to purchase another kindle (#2) for my son. Months later we learned that we could get a replacement for the original damaged kindle, so we got #3 (which we kept in a drawer… my wife didn’t need it since she already had an iPad). We got leather hardback covers for both to make sure they wouldn’t meet the same fate as the first. However it was all in vain, because of the kindle’s PPQ. Last week my son came home with k#2 experiencing the same screen failure as k#1. He was scolded (like with K#1) for not taking care of it. Because of the convenience (his class was currently reading Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events – can’t help but laugh at the irony) we gave him k#3. Yesterday, less than a week after the k#2 incident, he came home (visibly upset) because k#3 had failed.

At this point my blood was boiling! Not only did kindle’s PPQ provide for a third failure (exact same failure mode), but for two of those I unjustly put the blame on my son. Not this time though! This time it would become personal! The Piss-Poor-Quality of the kindle had gotten to me! (yes, as global electronic manufacturers strive to achieve 6-sigma quality, it looks like the folks at amazon have found a way to invert the equation!)

My initial reaction was to tweet about it to see if there was any kind of response from customer service. After all, knowing the kind of damage Twitter can do to an image, I thought they would quickly try to put out the ‘kindle’ (hahaha, ok, admit it -- that is funny)

-          @amazon our 3rd kindle (Keyboard) has now died. All three suffered the same fate. Garbled screen. POS quality. Want my money back!

-          @AmazonKindle 3rd kindle (Keyboard) has now died. All three suffered the same fate. Garbled screen. POS. Want money back!

-          @AmazonKindle Horrible quality! My 3rd just died of garbled screen syndrome. Don't want replacement, just money back!

I sent a total of three messages on my (500+ follower account) and none received a response from amazon (yes, that’s a lower case ‘a’ )! WOW, I could not believe it!

I called customer support this morning (or their late-evening… since their accent put them somewhere on the dark side of the earth) and the comedy continued. Because of the time windows when these units were purchased, they could refund k#3, but they could only replace k#2 … (I really don’t feel like going through k#4’s failure.) I pleaded with them that after putting me through 3 failures they should either refund both units or at least replace k#2 with a kindle fire (just to try it out - after all, it’s a completely different unit manufactured at a completely different facility.) The best they could offer was to return k#4 for a refund or exchange it for a kindle fire (plus $60) after I received it… (at this point the whole ordeal was turning into many trips to the post office, and I’m sure amazon will not pay for the gas!) They kept denying me the options I had proposed so I proceeded to warn them of the Twitter Fire-storm I was going to ignite. After 40+ minutes on the phone, they were steadfast on their procedures (and did not head my warning), so I decided I would do as they wished… but not without first lighting some ‘Twitter-Kindle’ to start the FIRESTORM!

In conclusion, there is a clear design and/or manufacturing flaw with the kindle. After three failures, and researching the web, it is obvious that many customers have experienced this problem. Nevertheless, amazon continues to sell the ‘keyboard’ version of the kindle. To make matters worse, their customer support system seems to be geared towards getting users to ‘upgrade’ to the kindle fire… We’ll see if I can’t change that!

As an advocate of innovation and quality, I get enormous satisfaction from making things better for others.  If you too have experienced PPQ on a product, or inadequate customer support, please help spread this story via social media and unleash some “Lemony Snicket” back on amazon. This will undoubtedly either A) Make the kindles a better product, or B) make amazon exit the e-reader business, or C) get amazon to cover the gas money for the lifetime supply of defective kindles they seem all too willing to send me so that I can turn around and drive them to the post office when the screens fail.