Mike had a comment that I wanted to highlight -
Amazon puts little “thank you for being an early adopter” messages in kindle receipts and elsewhere, but when they introduce a new model they don’t offer us “early adopters” a way to UPGRADE — no discount, no option to purchase before it’s on the market or even a “go to the head of the line” preference. Kinda sucks. “Thanks for helping us build a market but now you can just get in line with everyone else and pay full price, too.”
To be fair to Amazon, they did have a ‘go to the head of the line’ option if you ordered in the first two days. However, on every other count, they’re guilty as charged.
I feel that treating customers exceptionally well is absolutely critical for any company or business or even for a blog. Amazon generally does, and a lot of my purchases have been through Amazon (not only in the US, but also in UK and Canada).
With the Kindle, I do feel that there are a few areas where Amazon needs to focus more -
- Treating Kindle 1 owners really, really well as they helped spread the word and supported the Kindle when there were a lot of questions and doubts.
- Towards that end, an exchange your Kindle for $150 off Kindle 2 offer (and then selling those Kindle 1s as refurbished Kindles) or a $50 or $100 off Kindle 2 coupon would have been a good touch.
- Improvements that Kindle 1 customers are asking for – on the whole they’ve done a good job here with better buttons and a better cover. However, the lack of Folders in Kindle 2 bothers me (especially after seeing the Android on eInk videos).
- Maintaining the $9.99 price point. This might very well be the biggest thing Amazon can do to show that it appreciates Kindle owners.
I feel it’s more of a case of Amazon having to fight a lot of battles on a lot of fronts and letting a few things slip through the cracks rather than forgetting the people who made Kindle successful (to what extent – we have no idea 
) .
What do you think – Did Amazon mess up by not offering Kindle owners a discount on Kindle 2? Are you generally happy with how Amazon has been treating Kindle Owners?
Hell yeah they should have hooked us Kindle 1ers with something… especially post-Oprah…
I think they suspected (correctly) that they would have a huge demand for the kindle 2 and didn’t need to offer a discount. Of course I believe that they should have but Bezos is on record saying that given the amount of hardware on the device they can’t offer it any cheaper? Is that true? I doubt it. Offering $50 or $100 off to current owners would have been a goodwill gesture more than made up for by the purchases K2 owners would make.
I think they won’t have a problem selling the k2, I do think that first generation owners like myself will be slow to upgrade, some might even just wait for version 3.0…
You guys have a Kindle to play while the rest of us can’t wait to get our hands on one. And we’re not going to be the ones waxing nostalgic about no SD card and no folders and so on.
so just sell your Kindle 1 on ebay. there’s your discount.
Absolutely YES. Kindle 1 owners should get a hefty trade-in towards a Kindle 2. The price is crazy. Amazon says it is because of the hardware inside, but you can get an Asus ePC for about the same amount of money – a fully functioning tiny laptop!
I’m with st. Last I checked (a couple days ago) the market for used Kindles was still pretty good. So, if you want to turn yours in for 150$ off a kindle2, why not just sell your kindle for 150$ off, and apply that money to a new kindle?
I have a kindle 1, and I only got it in November. I don’t feel ripped off, though. Amazon doesn’t owe me a new version just because I bought the old version. I do find the new version intriguing, and would love having one, but this is just one of the things that happens when you’re an early adopter. I don’t recall palm ever offering me a discounted upgrade when they released a new version of their devices, and I don’t recall hearing any of my friends say that they got a discount on upgrades of their iphones when the new version came out. You buy a version of a hardware device, and sure enough, sooner or later (often sooner than you’d like), they’ll release another version.
I do hope that Amazon will continue to upgrade the *software* on the kindles, though. That would definitely make me happy.
i agree! if i had bought a kindle 1 and amazon had done this to me then i would be quite upset too!
the larger Amazon.com has gotten the more impersonal they have become but then that is actually to be expected—it still doesn’t make it right. if they wanted to keep themselves head and shoulders above the rest then they should have adopted the finer points of customer service—then they would have been exceptional but instead they are mostly like all of the others when it comes to customer service.