Did Amazon screw Kindle 2 buyers?

Should Amazon have pre-announced they had a larger screen Kindle coming when they announced the Kindle 2 (which was a major product upgrade)? As a Kindle 2 owner, I'm a bit upset because I would have preferred to have a choice. The product announcements came only 3 months apart. I saw one video report on Engadget referring to "Kindle 2 anger". 

IMHO, I think Amazon really screwed over it's Kindle 2 buyers. It gave them the impression that this was a major new product upgrade and encouraged them to buy it in February - when they most have known/had in the pipeline the DX for June.  

There's always new stuff coming from tech companies and you buy the latest gadget at your own risk, but this is a bit on the edge of what I think is reasonable. 

I'd like to see Amazon offer Kindle 2 owners a DX exchange program of some kind.

Comments

[Matty]

I agree, this was an extremely shady way for Amazon to approach this. I waited a good deal of time for the Kindle 2 release and would have liked the option of knowing that waiting a little longer would have resulted in a much better product for a minimal amount more. I also know I am not alone in this, I spoke to a fellow early adopter of the K2 who was also upset by the way this was handled. It is obvious Amazon knew they were going to do this but failed to advertise it fearing it would hurt the long awaited Kindle 2 sales. The question now is will they do the right thing? Whether that is an upgrade track or even something as simple as an offer of a discount for K2 owners who want an additional DX. If not I am afraid their business practices may tarnish the joy of the Kindle and leave me with the bad taste I associate with companies like Microsoft.

I'm a capitalist so I understand they want to turn a profit, I just believe building customer loyalty (even if you have a monopoly) is a good business practice. We all know getting a customer back after they have replaced your product is very difficult. If they don't do the right thing maybe those of us that are upset could have a coordinated Kindle 2 subscription cancellation on the DX release date to show our anger over their disingenuous practices. If money is such a motivator that may send a message.

[Jimmy Bosse]

The reason I finally committed to the K2 was that there were finally enough technical books to make it worth my time (have you tried carrying more than one MCSD prep book at a time?) Now with the DX I can get those books in their original layout! If I had know, I would have waited. I guess I'm not really mad at Amazon, especially after I had a good laugh at the Apple Lemmings who got pwned with the original iPhone price drop.

I hope Amazon might feel some pressure to at the very least incorporate the native PDF support (which is more important to me than the larger screen format and could probably work well if they also added screen rotation) into a Kindle 2 firmware upgrade which shouldn't be too difficult.