Amazon Prime Reading

Discussion in 'Reading & Writing' started by Yvonne Smith, Jan 1, 2018.

  1. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    @Yvonne Smith - how odd is that ! Especially as you are such a good customer. I'm hoping its a mistake
    Let us know will you - I'm as puzzled as you are
     
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  2. Chrissy Cross

    Chrissy Cross Supreme Member
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    #17
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  3. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    It has been over a year since they stopped the discount sales and reviews, so no one can write any kind of review unless they have purchased a product for full price. We are almost always happy with products we order from Amazon, and write informative reviews, so I just can’t imagine why everything would be deleted, but I guess that if it seems to be happening to a lot of people (for no reason), then maybe Amazon will work on getting the problem resolved for everyone.
    It is not like it makes a difference whether we can leave a review or not, but I feel as though I am convicted of some kind of a crime that I didn’t commit, and that distresses me.
     
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  4. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Although I had reviewed only restaurants that I had eaten at, and gave honest reviews, Yelp deleted my restaurant reviews a year or so ago, so I know what you mean. I think what happens is that a manufacturer or, in the case of Yelp, a restaurant owner complains. They look. at other reviews and decide whether yours was out of line with the others, or something, then deletes yours if it doesn't match all of the others. In the case of Amazon, since had been doing reimbursed reviews in the past (when that was allowed), they might have thought you were still doing them under the table, or something. I don't know, just guessing.
     
    #19
  5. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    We just recieved an email from Amazon, and it really does not say WHAT the problem is/was; just the same thing as it showed before, that we have violated some community rule.
    They don’t specify what product or review was at issue, and said that they will not provide any farther information. So, no only can we not present our side to whatever it is, we don’t even know what it was.
    Bobby and I have talked about this, and this is the only thing that we can think of.
    There was a set of earbuds that we purchased from Amazon, and they didn’t fit properly in the case, so they didn’t charge when the case was closed. Bobby padded the case with a bit of paper towel, and then they charged like they should; so he wrote to the manufacturer of the earbuds and explained what had happened, and recommended that they make the case fit better.
    They thanked him and sent him another set of earbuds, and possibly he might have mentioned this when he left a positive review of the earbuds. Since all of our reviews are gone, there is no way to even look and see if this might have been what the problem was.

    At this point, it just looks like Amazon is not going to be getting any further reviews from us.
     
    #20
  6. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    @Yvonne Smith - its an awful response from Amazon, yet typical of 'big' business today
    They really need to sort out the customer service. Even if it was the 'earbud case' they could have just deleted the review
    and told you why
    Like you, I wouldn't write another review
     
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  7. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    It is not that I won’t write another review, @Patsy Faye , it is that we are banned from writing reviews, forever ! It makes NO sense to me either, to deal with things this way. If they thought one review didn’t match what was allowed, they could have just not allowed that particular review, for whatever reason.
    To say that we can never, ever write an Amazon product review seems pretty harsh for one mistake, one very unintentional one.
     
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  8. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    Banned forever ! Are they mad ! !
    Ugh - I know I am :mad:
    Absolutely pointless
     
    #23
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  9. Thomas Stearn

    Thomas Stearn Veteran Member
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    Yvonne, your first post in this thread got me kind of hooked and I wanted to find out more about Amazon Prime Reading. Thanks for that inspiration.

    So I started doing some research this morning and found it quite off-putting. There seems to be no clear and condensed information on what Amazon Prime Reading actually is and what the advantages of it are. I found more information on external websites than on Amazon itself. What really bugs me is that they kind of force you to buy a pig in a poke. They promise over one million ebooks and I don't know how many available in the library. Since I don't want to read any books but only quite specific ones, the first thing I wanted to do is to find out what books would be available for download as well as for borrowing. That is not possible. You can check that only after you have signed on maybe to find out then that they only have books I'm not interested in. So I have given up on that and will buy the books the way I have always done it.
    What happened to you as a reviewer might show their true face.
     
    #24
  10. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    You might be confusing Prime Reading with the Kindle Unlimited, which is a different program altogether. If you have an Amazon Prime membership, then Prime Reading is one of the benefits that comes along with it, like the 2-day free shipping, and Amazon Prime videos.
    If you sign in to your Amazon account, and under the accounts and lists folder, you will see “your Prime membership”. That will open to a list of all of your Prime benefits, and Prime reading is on that list.
    Once you go to the Prime Reading library, then you can browse for books that you are interested in. There are selections that you can use to narrow down the list (fiction, non-fiction, mystery, self-help, etc) and then you can browse everything in the categories that you are interested in.
    New books and magazines are added every month, so there is a change over of books to read in any catagory.

    Kindle Unlimited is a paid-for program, and it costs about $10 a month for that program. If you read a whole lot of books, then it might be worth paying for, but even so, you can only borrow the books that they have on the list. Once you borrow a book, you can keep it as long as you want to borrow it, just like with Prime Reading, and you are only allowed around 10 books at a time for either program.
    I took one of the trials of Kindle Unlimited, and what I do is put in the search box the kind of book I am looking for, and then see which of the corresponding books will be on the Kindle Unlimited. Pretty much, they are cheaper books, and not the ones by well-known authors, although I have found a few that were.
    Also, you are only borrowing the book, and not buying it, so if you are reading books that you want to keep, then just buying it is a better option.
     
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  11. Thomas Stearn

    Thomas Stearn Veteran Member
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    Thanks, Yvonne, for your detailed and informative explanation. I've checked it, found it all in my account. It is as you say. I might, indeed, have confused Prime Reading with Kindle Unlimited. I also found out that they don't offer the books I'd like to read nor would I gain anything financially. So that was most insightful and helped me take a decision. Thanks again.
     
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  12. Beth Gallagher

    Beth Gallagher Supreme Member
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    I got an email yesterday about a new "Kindle Rewards" program that is being beta tested. I signed up to participate and already earned $3. :D

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  13. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    I don’t actually remember signing up for this, but it said that I was accumulating rewards, so apparently I did sign up at some point. since I have Kindle Unlimited, I mostly just borrow the books that i want to read, but when i do buy a book then it counts towards the rewards points.
     
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  14. Beth Gallagher

    Beth Gallagher Supreme Member
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    I should clarify that I didn't sign up for the program; they just offered it to me so I "signed up" for emails about the status of my account. The Beta page says this... "At this time, the Kindle Rewards Beta is only available to a select group of Amazon.com customers." I buy a lot of Kindle books so this will come in handy for me.
     
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