Kindle screen looks like Etcha-Sketch

trailingspouse

Just returned to my Kindle after about a year, charged it, and the screen looks like a poor Etcha-Sketch. It's unreadable. I don't use it often (prefer the real thing) but it's handy for holidays. In the previous year it's been sat in my bedside drawer. Only the Kindle and its charger in the drawer, no liquids spilt, never dropped.

Any ideas as to why this has happened? And more importantly, how to fix it? OH is fiddling with it at the moment, and he's a pretty nifty fiddler (not often beaten), but he's getting nowhere fast. Any help gratefully received.

LadyDee

Hi OP, if you don't get any responses here, then post on the Kindle forum - somebody there always seems to know the answer.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/forum/kindle?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

david39

We had that problem but could not solve it.
We ditched it and bought a new one. Paper white turns up quite regularly as a special offer on QVC and basic Kindle is £57 currently from Amazon.
My wife now has the Paper white but I just use the free Kindle app on my tablet which is fine except in bright sunlight.

Nodding_Donkey

Kindles do this, usually just after the guarantee runs out. Amazon then tell you it can't be repaired but offer you a 'refurbished'* one with a 3 month guarantee. Guess what happens after three months?

*How do they 'refurbish' them if they can't be repaired?

DavidP24

I had this happen to two kindles I bought, simple answer is DO NOT BUY KINDLE or any Amazon own brand product.

That is the ONLY way you can teach a company like Amazon who do not replace these when it is clearly a manufacturing defect.

Warranty is not an issue, a product has to last for a reasonable length of time under UK law, so if it worked for 13 months and you reasonable expected it to work for 60 months you are entitled to a refund of the missing 47 months. (£150 / 60 * 47)

These are are statutory rights

You start by asking Amazon, what is the life of this product?

If a Supplier says it is 5 years or longer then that effectively becomes part of the contract, if they give you that reasonable expectation of service life of the product.

If they try to avoid the question, ask them what is the MTBF of their worst component, MTBF is the mean time between failures. For example the LCD in a TV may be 150,000 hours.

My issue with Amazon is they make it expensive to return and they do not swap these out which is what I would expect a multi billion pound company to do.

Just another part of rip off Amazon, for example they print books in their depots, they sell those books for 99p plus postage, but if you want a Kindle version it is £8 for a product that is cheaper to produce and had no delivery. It should be the same 99p with no shipping as delivery is electronic.

Any they wonder why people post epub versions on torrent networks, this is what happens when you rip people off.

mac.d

Does the screen look anything like the one in this picture?



If so, it's a broken screen and can't easily be fixed. Its usually cheaper and easier to simply buy a replacement Kindle, although you can buy replacement screens for them to try and fix it yourself.

Also, this is user damage and not a fault or defect, which is why Amazon don't replace them. They don't just suddenly crack for no reason, I've got a few different ereaders in my household, Kindle's, Kobo's and Sony readers, all 2+ years old, and they all still work fine.

This is a common failure in all eink ereaders, and its the fragile glass substrate beneath the top screen that has fractured (a curved line on the screen is usually to be found somewhere and that's the giveaway). The Kindle doesn't need to have been dropped, it could also be that something has been leaning on the screen, or the Kindle itself has been flexed or bent. The damage isn't always obvious at the time, it might still work but when you have placed it back in the drawer the slight knock as its placed down has then caused the screen to crack because of the previous damage.

trailingspouse

Thanks all - the kindle had hardly been used (as I said in my original post, I prefer the real thing). It had been sat in an otherwise unused drawer for over a year. It was in a case. I struggle to see how it could have got broken.

But yes, mac.d, that's exactly what the screen looks like.

We've now fixed it with a new one - foolhardy maybe, but we'll see how this one goes.

kwikbreaks

I had it too and would certainly dispute "user damage". Like most others I bit the bullet and bought a replacement.