How to get a refund from Amazon for a dropped Kindle
I sometimes wish I’d gone to law school. Not because I hold an immense desire to become a hotshot lawyer or anything, but because doing so would have meant I could pen legal-sounding letters to companies every time I wanted a refund, even if I probably didn’t actually deserve one.
All products, no matter how well-known and respected a brand they may be from, have a chance of failing. It’s a fact of life. Even the most well-made electronic devices can go wrong (which is obviously the technical term) even without user error.
But user error definitely adds to the chances of a mishap. Like dropping it, for example.
Which is exactly what happened to Paul Gowder, who dropped his messenger bag containing a number of electronic devices. While everything else was fine after the foot-high drop to the pavement below, his Amazon Kindle was not. The screen had stopped functioning and was essentially borked.
Most of us would, in a similar situation, kick ourselves for out stupidity at having dropped a bag of such expensive items on to the ground and moved on, learning from the bad experience. But not Paul. According to The Consumerist, he contacted Amazon, which offered to replace his Kindle for $200.
Not happy with the offer, Paul then sent Amazon’s legal department a letter full of legalese. Rather than throw it in the trash, Amazon accepted the terms Paul had asked for, which was a $400 refund to prevent him filing a lawsuit. He built his case on the video below, which he stated made false claims concerning the robustness of the Kindle.
The full letter Paul sent is on his Uncommon Priors blog, and it makes for interesting reading. Clearly not everyone has it in them, either the guts or the legal know-how to follow this example, but it’s nice to see the little person winning out over a big company for once. Even if Gowder was chancing his arm a little. After all, he was the one who dropped the Kindle in the first place, and Amazon clearly cannot be blamed for that.
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