Eric Ravenscraft
In the early days of the Kindle Fire, Amazon had a feature where you could immediately start a video call with tech support. Despite its popularity, Amazon is phasing the feature out.
Mayday was a unique customer service feature that immediately connected users with a support representative via a video call directly on the Kindle Fire tablet screen. The rep can also share your screen and even draw on it to demonstrate how to use a feature. The feature was very popular, with many Kindle Fire users preferring it to contacting support on the phone or via email. For obvious reasons.
Nevertheless, according to a quietly updated support page, Amazon says the feature will be discontinued in June 2018. While older Kindle Fires offered Mayday, it hasn’t been available on newer devices for a while, so the change makes sense. In a statement to Geekwire, the company said that Mayday screen sharing (but not video calls) would still be available to owners of supported devices. However, in order to share your screen with a rep, you’ll need to first contact them by phone or email.
While the change is disappointing, given the feature’s popularity, it’s also somewhat expected. Adding video calls and by-default screensharing to otherwise normal customer service calls is a lot of extra infrastructure. Some customers may think it’s worth it (and we’re inclined to agree), but it seems Amazon is content providing customer service the old fashioned way for now.
