My letter to Jeff @Amazon

Amazon doesn’t understand families.

My daughter saved up her own money, did extra chores, etc. and purchased a Kindle Fire.

Two years later, we still can’t make it work right.  We’ve tried to work with Amazon support to no avail. It’s not a device problem, it’s a policy problem. 

Seriously, it’s brought my daughter to tears, and on several occasions, me or my wife trying to understand our options (via Google) to swears.

— Backstory --

My wife has Amazon Prime.  I’m the second adult on that account.  She and I both have our own Kindle Fire tablets.

The only option left is for my daughter to be a child.  Children, even teens, get a cheap, frustrating, severely limited experience on the Kindle Fire.  No efforts have been made to make the UI/UX pleasant, and worse yet, there’s absolutely no way for me to say “I trust my daughter” and give her access to the full use of the device.

— Ways I can solve (not great) --

So far, I can only think of two ways I can solve for this:

(1) Set her up on her own Amazon account as an adult. She loses Prime benefits and all of her past Kindle purchases, we lose ability to approve her purchases (she receives Amazon gift cards as gifts at all major holidays from her grandparents, it’s essentially her currency)

(2) Buy her an Android device and through the Kindle Fire in a drawer.

— Ways Amazon can solve --

I can think of several ways Amazon can solve:

(1) Amazon allows adding householding to Amazon Prime - for a small annual fee (say $15), additional family member signins can be added.  They have to use the same primary shipping address as the primary Prime account holder.  The Kindle Fire recognizes them as adults.

(2) Amazon lets parents fully unlock a teenager’s Amazon Kindle letting them experience the entire Kindle Experience.  Decent parental controls could place limits on App Store, Shopping, Internet access (like timed and remote on/off).