Amazon’s Kindle Owner’s Lending Library

In the later part of last week, I received an email from Ama­zon that they had unveiled their new Kin­dle Owner’s Lend­ing Library.  They were excited to announce that Ama­zon cus­tomers who were Prime mem­bers and Kin­dle own­ers would have access to their new lend­ing library.

I’ll be hon­est and say that the con­di­tions of the lend­ing library (one book at a time, and only one book per month per per­son) left me a lit­tle under­whelmed.  How­ever, I looked through the books, and there were a few I was inter­ested in read­ing off the bat.  I maneu­vered my way through the menus and attempted to access the book I wanted.

Jason and I have been Ama­zon Prime mem­bers for many years.  Hav­ing Ama­zon Prime allows us to receive free two day ship­ping on most of the pur­chases we make from Amazon’s site.  It also means that many times it’s eas­ier to pop onto Ama­zon and make a few clicks to make a pur­chase than it is to get into the car with one, two, or three kids and run across town to buy some­thing.  We make very good use of our Prime membership.

So, when I attempted to access the lend­ing library with my Kin­dle, I was dis­ap­pointed to find out that Ama­zon is only allow­ing the pri­mary account holder to receive this ben­e­fit of Kin­dle own­er­ship and Prime mem­ber­ship.  I con­tacted Amazon’s cus­tomer ser­vice, and I was told that I would be able to access the lend­ing library if I chose to asso­ciate my Kin­dle with Jason’s Ama­zon account.  I sup­pose I could do that, but that means I would likely lose most of the 100+ books I cur­rently have on my Kin­dle that are asso­ci­ated with my account.

Sure, Ama­zon could be con­cerned that peo­ple might try to take advan­tage of this and add friends or other fam­ily mem­bers to their account to receive the ben­e­fits.  In my opin­ion, this would be eas­ily solved by say­ing either that Prime mem­ber­ship must be lim­ited to either a par­tic­u­lar num­ber of accounts/email addresses or to ver­ify that account mem­bers share the same phys­i­cal address.

Jason and I are long time cus­tomers.  We aren’t try­ing to take advan­tage of the ben­e­fits of any of these mem­ber­ships.  I would like as the non-primary account holder to receive the same ben­e­fits as Jason does.  Right now, between the lim­its on the book lend­ing and the lim­its on the mem­bers, I’m really frus­trated with Ama­zon.  It seems more like a pub­lic­ity stunt than an attempt to give loyal cus­tomers addi­tional rea­sons to remain customers.

*I’m sure this is not nec­es­sary, but I’ll add it any­way.  All opin­ions expressed are my own and have not been solicited by Amazon.