This is just a personal choice of mine, but I refuse to spend money at a company that is this stupid.
Case in point: In early December I tried to buy an eBook (for reading on my computer) from B&N’s online store, only to be met with a message stating that this book was not available for my geographic location. Huh? I then went to Sony’s online eBook store, found the identical eBook, paid for it and downloaded it immediately.
So, I emailed B&N that day and got this reply on December 14, 2009 — a few days later (emphasis mine):
Because selling eBooks to international customers involves issues regarding international copyright laws, tariffs, VAT taxes, currency conversions, etc., only US residents are able to purchase eBooks on the Barnes & Noble website at this time. Our customers in Canada will be able to purchase eBooks on our website starting December 1. So when did you try to order a e-book due to you are now able to download e-books while in Canada?
It appears that most of that response was a standard form letter, but note the last sentence: So when did you try to order a e-book due to you are now able to download e-books while in Canada?
I did not respond to that question because a) I made it clear in my email the date I tried to order, and b) that sentence is so poorly written it is clear I would be wasting my time trying to straighten that woman out.
Here’s a suggestion for Barnes & Noble: You obviously have taken the time to produce well-written form letters to provide a response to many potential questions. Don’t let customer service people adlib unless they are able to correspond more coherently. It does not help your image.
I thought I wanted to try the Nook; now I see that would have been a mistake. I would have had difficulty ordering eBooks from B&N – all because I happen to live in Canada.
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B&N seems to be clueless not only when dealing with customers but also when dealing with the small, indie publishers. Our micro-publishing company signed up with B&N to provide our books as e-books in epub format in Aug 2009. As of today (Jan 25, 2010), not one of those books is available in their E-book Store, although all are still sitting on the B&N FTP server.
Sony is just as bad for micro-publishers, since they won’t even deal with us unless we want to do so via Smashwords (we could get the books into B&N via Smashwords, too). We won’t do that, though, for several reasons.
You can read my comments on this issue on my blog post B&N and Sony Just Don’t Get It.
Somehow, Amazon manages to accommodate both their customers and all the small presses and self-published authors (for print books and e-books).
Cheers…and keep up the good fight!
I’ve been a little leery of Amazon since their deletion (censorship) of such purchased books like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four from people’s readers. However, I think since then, I think they’ve shown they are willing to listen to customers — at least on some issues (see below).
Now, as eReaders go, the Kindle is probably about the best so far, but I refuse to spend that kind of money for a product that is essentially a one-trick pony. And I’m not holding out for the iSlate either. I’ll be reading eBooks on a netbook for reasons I outline here: Fed up with the eReader industry. And I guess that means I won’t be able to make use of Amazon for my eBook purchases. They want to force avid readers to buy their Kindle, but I absolutely refuse.
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