No, there’s not a virus on the new Kindle Fire, but you wouldn’t know that if you tried to get support for the disappearing Box.Net for Android app. One of the many pre-written responses Amazon’s support agents throw out is an assertion that your problems must be caused by anti-virus software. If you point out that there isn’t anti-virus software on the Kindle, they write back to assure you that there’s no anti-virus software on the Kindle.
lol
So Amazon has this program that sounds all sorts of nifty for the marketplace seller and buyer, Fulfillment by Amazon. The theory goes, the seller sends Amazon all their inventory, Amazon stores it in their warehouse with everything else, and when something gets bought, it goes into the system like any other product sold by amazon, complete with free super-saver shipping and all that. Sounds nice.
The reality seems to be somewhat less than it could be. I ordered two items that are supposedly in stock in the Fulfillment by Amazon system, and two items that are supposedly In Stock as part of amazon’s regular system. For no reason I can figure out, they won’t be shipping anything out till next week, a full 7 days after the order was placed. The only reason I picked the Fulfillment by Amazon seller over one of the others, was the assumption that Amazon would actually ship out the item in a reasonable timeframe. schmucks.
“Amazon locates your products using our advanced web-to-warehouse, high-speed picking and sorting system.” –any system that takes a week to find two books doesn’t deserve the name “high-speed”.
UPDATE: Looks like I’m not the only one feeling the Fulfillment By Amazon hate.
UPDATE2: How interesting. It would seem that complaining had an effect, they shipped the order early, this morning.
The latest replacement Kindle DX died tonight.
Was reading along just fine, went to turn the page, and no response. Tried all the standard reset options, no response.
Sigh.
UPDATE: I didn’t want to spend my saturday night on the phone with tech support, so I spent the night reading from the original pdf, on my mac. This morning, I start the call-me-back process for kindle support, and grab the kindle to have ready to talk about, and notice that it’s got the screensaver on. That’s different that the blank and unresponsive I saw last night, so I hang up before support answers, and start to see what’s what.
The device lost where I last was reading, of course, and flaked out twice on actions I’ve requested. In one case, the screen saver came back on in the middle of navigating the main menu. In the other case, it ignored a button press to open a book from said same menu. Now, it seems OK. We shall see.