How @Microsoft and @Amazon blew up decades of customer loyalty in a manner of minutes.
My wife’s old @Microsoft Surface Pro 7, the one iFixIt gave a 1 out of 10 for being non repairable, eventually had its battery die. Replacing the battery requires ungluing the fragile screen with heat, disassembling the insides of the notebook, then ungluing the battery and replacing it followed by re-assembly. It was designed as a disposable computer (as we learned). We decided this winter get a new Surface Pro 11 for her, all of which now run the Snapdragon ARM-based processor.
One of her main uses of the Surface Pro has been the @Amazon @Kindle app, for her over 600 books. While she was traveling, she received a s/w update at some point and that killed her pre-installed KIndle app; the Kindle App no longer works and the version that ran on Snapdragon is no longer available.
BECAUSE AMAZON DISCONTINUED SUPPORT FOR THE ARM / SNAPDRAGON PROCESSOR AND KINDLE FOR SURFACE PRO IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE.
We wasted a lot of money on what for her is a now useless Surface Pro – her primary use was reading her Amazon books.
Amazon is the company that quietly and without notice to us, ended two-day Prime benefits to our entire half of the state. All shipments now take 5-7 days or up to 3 weeks. We and many others here dropped Prime because of that.
These are case studies in how to destroy long time customer loyalty in a matter of minutes. Both Microsoft and Amazon have lost our loyalty after these stunts. Both companies have pissed off long time (25-35 years) customers. Are there any adults working at these companies who had the foresight to understand what their actions would lead to?
We are considering no longer purchasing online distributed media and returning to CDs and books (I had another bad experience with Apple Music this week).
This corporate behavior-especially by Amazon – disabling primary access to Kindle books is unacceptable.
Yes, she can use the Amazon online reader but only when she has Internet access. The whole point of the Surface Pro was to take her books with her to places where there may be no Internet access.
I am typing this on a notebook running Ubuntu Linux as I am moving several systems away from Windows and Mac OS. They have lost their game and completely lost our loyalty. 100% gone.
