Sick of the ads on your ad-supported Kindle 4 with Special Offers? You can get rid of them, but it’ll cost you. The quick fix fits right into Amazon’s new “it’s not a device, it’s a service” mantra.
The Digital Reader reports that Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has added the capacity to “unsubscribe” from screensavers and special offers on the Kindle with Special Offers. If you do unsubscribe, you’re charged $30–in other words, bringing the cost of the $79 device back up to $109, the cost without the ads.
This only appears to work on the newest Kindle, the basic non-touchscreen version that was released last week. The upcoming Kindle Touch ($99 ad-supported/$139 non-) and Kindle Touch 3G ($149 ad-supported/$189 non-) will presumably also include the capacity, with an “upgrade” cost of $40.
Jeff Bezos has called the upcoming Kindle Fire a “service,” not a tablet, and here we see a way in which Amazon is treating its e-readers as a service as well, allowing users to “upgrade” them to a premium version if they don’t like the ads–the way they could do with non-electronic freemium products. (Yeah, I’m imagining an entirely free ad-supported Kindle somewhere off in the future.)
It’s a smart move by Amazon, with no apparent downside for the company: Draw people in with the lower prices, but keep them happy if they decide they don’t like the ads–why not? And as a user on the MobileRead forum points out, “you can even keep the K4 subscribed long enough to save $30 in offers and that will cover your out of pocket for the $30 unsubscribe fee.”
Unclear: Whether you can “downgrade” a non-ad-supported Kindle to a version with ads and receive money back.
It will only be a couple of weeks before hackers figure out how to do EXACTLY what amazon does… but without the absurd $30 charge.
Why would I want to remove the offers? I saved over $200 on my new Macbook Air thanks to a 20% off coupon from KSO…
Good point–worth pointing out that a lot of people actually really like the offers they’ve gotten.
Hey everyone! If you want to change the screensavers on your Kindle (not the one with Special Offer though), you can take a look at http://www.kubizo.com
Have a great day!
This is a lie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!