How profitable was this behavior and its paid removal?

I have always felt that the default display of ads on Lock Screen cheapened the devices—-even the flagship oasis model required an additional purchase to remove the ads.

That seemed completely at odds with the premium pricing and marketing.

Also, it seemed like there was always some way to call Amazon support and make claims about location or some other detail that would make support disable the ads for free. Are you aware of those requests and manual handling?

It's been several years since I left Amazon, and nearly a decade since I worked on anything relevant to those questions, but I'll answer what I remember.

The ads were profitable enough that customers buying devices without the ads for an extra $20 didn't quite make up for it. When they started selling the smart covers for the Paperwhite (IIRC the covers launched at $50) those made them more profit than they lost from reduced ad interactions on the lockscreen. I never knew the exact number though, and could be remembering wrong on some of that. Obviously I have no idea what the numbers would be today though.

There was a backend service with an endpoint which could un-enroll a device in ads, and I know that some customers were able to get ads disabled by just complaining. You can also, even today, just pay that same $20 for removal after you already have the device (I just checked on my own device here https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/alldevices, I go into the device and there's a button that says "Remove offers").

Also, I'm not sure I quite agree with the ads being at odds with the premium pricing. I could have easily turned off ads on my personal kindles (using the aforementioned backend services) and I never bothered because I really just don't find them all that intrusive. The lockscreens you get when ads are disabled are also really boring, so I kept the ads. Recently the tradeoff has shifted slightly, with some of the garbage AI covers I've seen, so I'm not positive what decision I'd make if it were still free (to me), but it's still definitely not worth $20 to me.

I had a kindle with the unlimited roaming and it was great. I bought it at a time when I was overseas for 9 months a year, they must have eaten so many roaming fees on my behalf.

My next kindle had the ads, and I did indeed call customer service and have them remove it for no charge.

I’m very anti ad, and when my current kindle kicks the bucket, I’ll certainly be going with something else. They aren’t intrusive, but the principle is that I want to control when my time is commercialized.

Aside from all that, Amazon retail has gotten horrible logistics where I am in a medium sized Canadian town (50k people, 1.5 hours from the nearest international container port, 5 minutes from the nearest international airport). The delivery times have gotten so long over the past year that AliExpress is pretty consistently the fastest shipping.

Amazon has gone from being the first place I go shopping to the last.

I'm so glad someone else is mentioning this. Last week, on what was Wednesday July 3, I needed to order a new suitcase and I obviously went to Amazon. I'm a Prime subscriber and not a single suitable suitcase (no pun intended) could be delivered prior to the following Monday - which was too late for me, as it'd be too close a call for my trip. That had never happened to me, ever, with Amazon. They were going to be unable to deliver on any day from Wednesday to Sunday, even though I was literally in the middle of Los Angeles rather than some remote location. For the first time, I am seriously reconsidering renewing Prime. I wonder what's happening behind the scenes.

I live in a decent sized city, ~1 million people.

On a commercial prime account, I frequently find items that are listed as next day delivery only to get them in my cart, go through the checkout process and on the final page find that shipping will actually be 7 business days.

Every time it comes up, I am now attempting to get our company to close its Amazon account. It's not convenient or useful if I have to spend an hour navigating through constant lies in order to find the 1 product that actually ships when it says it will. I can go to a department store or office supply store and buy the things for the same cost in less time.

What I wonder is: is this by design? ie: Amazon choosing to stop subsidizing certain types of shipments etc? Or is this still, in 2024, a result of pandemic-era supply chain strain and so forth?

I think its by design. I can't imagine any other reason for Amazon to show me "Will arrive tomorrow via prime shipping" on the item page and then, only when it is in the cart showing me actual delivery being 4+ days.

I am guessing that since it is such a hassle to go back to the cart, pull the item with the false shipping dates, and then find another similar item with good shipping dates, add to cart, go through checkout, find out that shipping is actually 4+ days, rinse and repeat until you either get lucky or give up, they're probably not going to fix it because it makes them more money to keep you frustrated.

Can't you find nearby local stores to buy items on the spot if you are in hurry?

I literally said I could go and buy them from a local store for the same price and get the items faster.

The problem is, the local stores don't have net 30 terms and we don't have corporate / business accounts with them, and it would be a huge hassle to add them.

I’ve actually found interesting book suggestions from the kindle ads so shrug.

Sure. But my point is that I only want to be shown those suggestions when I choose to go to the built in, unremovable book store app on my kindle. Not when I set my device down for 10 minutes to go make a coffee, and it decides that I have been away long enough to needlessly replace the content I paid Amazon for with content that someone else is paying Amazon to show me.

Isn't it enough that I bought their device, and that I fill it with content from their store that "makes suggestions" (shows ads) when I visit it?

I called in and complained about an awkward romance novel cover ad a few years ago and they disabled ads for me for free.