I’m on spring break this week and just happened to check my Unquiet Library email account tonight that I use with my Amazon account for the library. I was a bit startled (although maybe I should not have been?) to discover an email with the subject, “Corporate Accounts Program Update.” Here is the email:
| Dear Amazon.com Customer,We’re contacting you because you are the Primary Account Manager of a corporate account at Amazon.com. We wanted to let you know that effective May 15, 2011, Amazon.com will no longer offer the Corporate Accounts Program.
This program allowed the use of identical sign-in credentials (the same e-mail address and password combination) for both personal and corporate account information. You may continue to use this corporate account information and place orders at Amazon until May 15. To maintain access to the information (payment methods, shipping addresses, and order history) on the corporate account and continue placing orders at Amazon.com after May 15, a new e-mail address and password is required. You can read more about this change and establish a new e-mail address and password for the corporate account information using the link below: https://www.amazon.com/gp/corporate/migration We appreciate your business. Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com. Sincerely, WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO? WHAT WILL CHANGE? WHAT ABOUT CORPORATE ACCOUNTS FUNCTIONALITY? WHAT IF I HAVE QUESTIONS? WHAT IF I DON’T DO ANYTHING?
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Now as if I don’t have enough to worry about at any given moment, I’m now wondering what will happen once I am forced to associate the email address (one that I have specifically for The Unquiet Library) with the corporate or “personal” (which in this case, is still school, but it is the side of the library Amazon account I use for purchasing ebooks with gift cards). Until now, you could use one email for your corporate and “personal” (in this case, “school”) account. Now that email has to be associated with one or the other. So here’s now what I’m now wondering:
1. What happens if I associate the email with the corporate (which we only used to buy the Kindles and the covers)? Will I lose all my records with my “personal”/ (again, school) account that I used to buy the eBooks?
2. How will I access all my records of my ebook purchases if that email is no longer associated with that side of my account? Access to these records is extremely important for my library because of purchasing rules in my district.
3. It sounds like the option to use purchase orders will still be in place for businesses/libraries/schools that already have a corporate account, but will new customers be able to get a corporate account for this purpose? I’m not sure if I am missing something in the initial email from Amazon that clarifies that question or if the wording/language is as ambiguous as I think it is.
For those of you who work in libraries and have a corporate account, what concerns (if any) do you have about this news?
The Unquiet Librarian 
I work with 9 people who are located on 5 different campuses. We have been using Amazon corporate accounts for several years, to do all our book ordering and most of our DVD ordering. There have been some glitches along the way – mostly things Amazon charged to the wrong account – but in general it has worked really well. Our boss is looking into this and trying to figure out what we’ll do now.
I’m very sad that they’ve decided to eliminate this program rather than fixing it. But I’m sure it must have been an awful pain in the neck for them.
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I have mainly used my corporate account to purchase Kindles; right now, I could probably purchase them locally. I am mainly worried right now what will happen to the non-corporate account attached to the email because that is the side that has all of our ebook orders we’ve done for the Kindle books.
Hopefully, they will find a way to fine tune and improve the program—Barnes and Noble does purchase orders, so hopefully, addressing what may be problematic with the current system, rather than eliminating it, will be the direction they take.
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I use my corporate account to purchase books for my library. I did not get that Amazon email yet but went in and made the change, then logged into the new “corporate account”.
Bottom line – nothing came with it although old orders remained in the personal account. Things were a bit confused – I had to delete my school address from my personal account and re-enter my credit card info on the personal site – Amazon said I had never shipped to my personal address…
The whole thing is messy and my take is that this is a way to get people to pay for Amazon Prime twice, because it does not move with you to the corporate account.
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We’ve been using our amazon corporate account for 8+ years. We buy all of our DVDs from them and now all of our Kindles and Kindle Editions. We never got this email. Did anyone else get it?
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I also received this email, supposedly from Amazon. I’m happy to dis-associate my library and personal accounts, but it seems odd that don’t see any information regarding this on the Amazon website.
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My guess is they are doing this because of lost revenue when it comes to Amazon Prime membership. I use one Prime membership for both my personal and corporate accounts. Now I will have to purchase an additional membership for the corporate account.
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My school is dealing with this right now. For ten years or so we’ve had a corporate account with Amazon and the three librarians could order items for the library with their login. We could also print invoices, track shipments, receive email confirmations and update and initiate returns. Since the migration to their new payphrase system, we can’t do anything but order. The Primary Account Manager (in the business office) has all the functionality. This means paying for orders, tracking orders and returning items is very time consuming now as I can’t do it myself. I’m trying to get a feel for how many librarians have Amazon accounts in the their name with the school’s line of credit or credit card as the method of payment. I would be interested in other’s thoughts about this. Has losing this functionality been a problem for anyone else and what have they done about it?
And of course, there’s the issue of the digital content still being in my personal account. Is there any news about that?
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