Quote:
Originally Posted by Kumabjorn
Then why don't they just do like Amazon and not show them as available?
|
They do.
I've got a feeling that BoB has been doing some housekeeping lately as half the books in my wish list recently became unavailable overnight (i.e. they stayed in my wishlist but there's no Add to Cart button next to them, just a Delete one).
I haven't gone through all of them but for all of those I tried, I was able to find a different edition of the same titles (in all cases slightly more expensive) by another publisher.
So I guess they have been doing some georestriction-related work lately and perhaps some titles are still messed up because of that? And not every title will have more than one publisher and even if they do, so they may not have a legally available file to switch it with.
It happened to me a few weeks ago that I couldn't download a specific title I'd just bought, and the customer relations person who replied to my e-mail said that they'd switched the download link to another edition (or something along those lines), so I could download the title after that.
I wonder if some publishers have also been doing some georestrictions-related housekeeping of their own? Because I just recently noticed that books by one author, which had been available on Kobo some years ago but were then removed, but which were always legally available for me on Amazon, had re-appeared on Kobo.
Anyway, I'd think it's worth following up with BoB to see if they can give you a straight answer - if it's for example really due to geo-restrictions changing on that book and you just had the bad timing to buy it just as it happened or before some database or another had refreshed, or if it's something else. I love BoB but if it becomes a more widespread problem - that international customers can see and buy specific books but not download them - then it's pretty worrying.