Two years ago, we tried to reunite a Kindle left behind on a plane with its owner, and we didn’t succeed. The reader who found it didn’t trust the airport lost and found, and Amazon wasn’t any help. Even though Amazon knows full well who each Kindle belongs to, with their e-mail address and even their credit cards and billing addresses. That doesn’t matter, though. When Steve called about a Kindle that he found, Amazon told him to throw it away.

If you’re wondering why he didn’t turn it in at the lost and found of the place where he found it, well, he found it right outside of his back door. “It was just the tablet, as in someone dropped it somehow,” he wrote to Consumerist. A less honest person would see this as a sign that the universe wanted him to have the very latest version of Kindle Fire HD, but Steve is honest. It bothers him that he has this Kindle.

“I asked if they would contact the owner and then I could send the tablet to Amazon and they could in turn send it to the customer,” he told us. “I didn’t ask for contact info for obvious reasons.” Yet Amazon still isn’t in the business of reuniting customers and Kindles. What was he told when he asked Amazon? “Instead of trying to get the tablet to its owner, Amazon told me to throw it away!”

What’s curious about that piece of advice is that you’re not supposed to toss items with rechargeable batteries in the trash, and Amazon has a mail-in recycling program for Kindles.

In the meantime, Steve’s best option may be putting up posts on Craigslist and other free, popular classified-ad venues. If that doesn’t work, he can either keep the device or turn it in to local police. The latter option is probably the better one if his conscience is bothering him.

Still, we contacted Amazon to find out whether “eh, throw it away” is an official policy when an honest person turns in a wayward Kindle. We’ll update you when we find something out.

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