Amazon Relents on Replacing Cracked Kindle Screens

Amazon has dropped its $200 fee for replacing Kindle screens allegedly cracked by its own protective covers...but the class action suit is still out there.

In the wake of a class-action lawsuit filed in a Seattle federal court earlier this week, Amazon.com now says it will replace Kindle screens cracked by its own optional protective cover accessory free of charge. Prior to the class-action suit, Amazon had been charging customers $200 for the repair; the suit alleges that clips from an optional protective cover sold with the Kindle can crack the device’s display and eventually render the e-reader non-functional.

However, the $5 million class-action lawsuit filed against Amazon over the cracked screens is still proceeding, at least for the moment, and will presumably attempt to recover damages on behalf of Kindle owners who have already been charged for the $200 repair.

Amazon’s choice to waive the $200 fee for replacing screens on Kindle’s damaged by its own protective cover comes only in the wake of media coverage of the class-action lawsuit: the issue had been festering for months, with impacted individual customers trying unsuccessfully to get some sort of satisfaction on the matter from Amazon.

Amazon currently sells the Kindle 2 for $299 and the larger Kindle DX for $489; Amazon has not published sales figures for its Kindle devices.