Dealing with Barnes and Noble

[rcuadro]

Bah! That is why I like Amazon
1. Buy book
2. Call CS
3. On hold for 34 seconds
4. Talk to them about Under the Dome but they refund me the money for Boomerang for some odd reason and took it off my list of books purchased
5. Called the back and got credit for twice the amount for the book so I can buy the book again and get more stuff.
6. Smile

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by CleverClothe

So basically the only problem here is bad customer service.

No, fraud: promising one product and delivering another. Then refusing to correct the error, indicating they intend to continue charging people for something they're not providing.

[rmm200]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Oh, please. You're just reflexively promoting and rationalizing piracy and copyright infringement, as per usual.

I am really getting a little tired of seeing people on this forum calling other people pirates; without identifying who the real pirates are. The real pirates are the publishers who have taken rights to themselves that never existed in copyright law. They feel they have far more rights now withj EBooks than they ever did with print media. If you want to get a real laugh out of an EBook publisher ask about fair use. When I have the same rights with EBooks as I do with real books, I will buy protected ones.

These rights include:
1) Actually get and be able to use what I pay for. This is frequently NOT the case.
2) Be able to modify what I pay for
3) Be able to lend my EBook to a friend
4) Be able to sell my EBook as used

Currently I have no Copyright books. The only ones I would consider are those without DRM.

I will pledge my time to defeating whatever politicians got us in this mess with poorly written intellectual property laws. The purchaser has rights too.

Robert

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Moejoe

Well, you piracy-is-evil people do like to confuse sharing with high-seas murder and the like, so I don't see why I can't do it too.

I have yet to see anyone say that "public domain is a bad thing" or "PD is theft." I haven't seen anyone -- except maybe Sherman Alexie -- conflate legitimate forms of sharing (e.g. public domain, Creative Commons licenses and the like) with piracy. Nor have I seen anyone really refer to piracy as anything more severe than theft. Certainly no one in this thread is making such claims.

Spare us your straw men, kthx.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I have yet to see anyone say that "public domain is a bad thing" or "PD is theft." I haven't seen anyone -- except maybe Sherman Alexie -- conflate legitimate forms of sharing (e.g. public domain, Creative Commons licenses and the like) with piracy. Nor have I seen anyone really refer to piracy as anything more severe than theft. Certainly no one in this thread is making such claims.

Spare us your straw men, kthx.

Nope. Too busy. Watching cartoons. *Bender Bending Rodriguez*

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

No, fraud: promising one product and delivering another. Then refusing to correct the error, indicating they intend to continue charging people for something they're not providing.

Since it was an error, as you admit, I doubt it could be considered fraud.

I noticed that gr8npwrfl hung up before CS could deal with the wrong file issue.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by rmm200

I am really getting a little tired of seeing people on this forum calling other people pirates; without identifying who the real pirates are. The real pirates are the publishers who have taken rights to themselves that never existed in copyright law.

OK, so let me get this straight. John Doe gets a copy of the "Harry Potter" books via bittorrent; the author gets zero compensation for her work; these are the people I refer to as "pirates." Sounds pretty spot-on to me.

As to publishers "taking rights," so far I have yet to see any rulings that require that digital content must be transferrable, for example. More importantly, the idea that "original copyright law" could be extended to any digital content without major adaptations and changes is absurd; no one in 1709 could have possibly conceived of ebooks, let alone know the ideal laws and limitations for an invention 300 years in the future. Even fair use was not a statutory law until 1976.

I.e. it makes sense that the rights and abilities you have in one medium do not perfectly map onto a radically different medium, and that the nature and structure of copyright laws will change over time. Inflexible laws are of little benefit to anyone.

Originally Posted by rmm200

If you want to get a real laugh out of an EBook publisher ask about fair use.

Absolutely nothing about DRM or copyright law prevents fair use -- which is excerpting limited portions of a work for uses like criticism, academic research, parody and the like. Fair use has nothing to do with transfer of ownership and the like.

Originally Posted by rmm200

When I have the same rights with EBooks as I do with real books, I will buy protected ones.

Uh huh. I guess you failed to notice that even DRM'ed ebooks (which are "real" by the way, just electronic) grant you a couple of abilities and rights that are effectively impossible with paper books. I can't make an online backup of my paper books, or duplicate it at will for personal use at essentially zero cost; I can't rip out 20 pages of a paper book that's in a store, take them home, read them at my leisure, and then decide later to buy it or not; I can't pop open a paper book and have it read the words to me....

Originally Posted by rmm200

1) Actually get and be able to use what I pay for. This is frequently NOT the case.

....? I've been able to use all the ebooks I've bought.

Originally Posted by rmm200

2) Be able to modify what I pay for

OK, so if the paper book has a typo, you can rip out the page, have it properly reprinted, and rebind the book? Gotcha.

(Not that this excuses poor typesetting, but this is just not something you can really do with a paper book either.)

Originally Posted by rmm200

3) Be able to lend my EBook to a friend
4) Be able to sell my EBook as used

Lending might become a more common option, I do think this is something technically feasible that should be more widely available. But it's not a deal-breaker.

As to selling, unfortunately there is almost no way to make this technically feasible without extremely intrusive and restrictive methods, including granting the retailer the ability to reach into multiple devices and delete your files -- an act that apparently makes a lot of people unhappy.

If you prefer not to purchase DRM'ed books, that's your choice. But I don't see much reason to act like Macmillan kicked your dog because they are essentially trying to do their job -- and ensure that the people who worked to produce a work for your reading pleasure gets compensated fairly for that work.

[Ken Maltby]

It is another B&N company, now - but I've gotten ebooks from ereader.com for quite a
while now. At first I bought them there for use on my PDA. Then I bought my JBL from
them (along with $50 in eReader rewards). The ebooks, even older ones purchased for my PDA, read well in the JBL. The fate of small companies that get acquired by larger diversified companies, is not always pretty. I hope that they can continue to function as a good source for eBooks.

Luck;
Ken

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

I haven't seen anyone -- except maybe Sherman Alexie -- conflate legitimate forms of sharing (e.g. public domain, Creative Commons licenses and the like) with piracy.

See: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...08&postcount=6

[gr8npwrfl]

I was not upset until after the call to customer service. I purchased a product which I never got. The company does not feel that customer service is that important when they put me on hold for over an hour.

Yes it is true I did not give them a chance to correct their error because I hung up on them. But at what point is enough just enough. At what point does my time on hold without proper customer service get beyond the point of giving them a fair chance to correct what was just an error.

Right now the economy sucks many merchants are hurting for sales. I do not go to amusement parks, and other pay to enter events only to stand in line or have to wait. At some point my time is worth something.

When I hung up on customer service my opinion was they did not care enough to have sufficient CS reps to give reasonable care for their customers. I was already on edge when the CS rep gave me attitude, I had not asked for a refund at that point. I was trying to resolve the issue because I did not receive what I had paid for.

I then made a decision that any company that does not care for their customers by offering any reasonable customer service, that I wanted to cancel my account because I CHOOSE not to ever order from them again. They tell me that I can not cancel my account and they will keep your credit card information till hell freezes over.

I had to threaten them with an attorney to get the account canceled and remove my credit card information. My credit information with them, to make purchases on their site is a privilege not a right.

In my opinion I gave them a fair chance to correct the problem.

What is the old saying the customer is always right ? (at least if their reasonable)

I was being reasonable PERIOD

[brecklundin]

I looked through B&N as well as Borders...and well, for the reference & non-fiction titles I am seeking, they have nothing and of those they do have, the selection is extremely tiny and limited. And using the "well, they are new at this..." apologist excuse id hardly valid, either a company can deliver or they cannot. Based on the very poor selection, there are far better options. I do not see B&N or Borders lasting more than a handful of years unless Amazon, Fictionwise and others all get bird-flu at the same time because some investors in China bought up all the stock for B&N along with Borders.

[Ken Maltby]

Fictionwise, like eReader, is "A Barnes & Noble Company" (Check the fine print at the
bottom of the web site home pages.)

[lene1949]

Yeah... no-one knows why Jeppe drinks...

Sorry, some Danish saying...

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

OK, so let me get this straight. John Doe gets a copy of the "Harry Potter" books via bittorrent; the author gets zero compensation for her work; these are the people I refer to as "pirates." Sounds pretty spot-on to me.

Except for the part where you can't prove any economic loss to the author (and, in this particular example, JK Rowling has made a deliberate and conscious choice not to be compensated for electronic editions of her work. Which is entirely her right, of course, however silly it may seem to me.)

When John Doe begins selling copies of (in-copyright) books, whether electronic or paper (and yes, paper book piracy is big business in some places) without compensating the author, that's piracy. The Great Amazon 1984 Fiasco? That was all about piracy. When publishers decide that a contract written before the issue of electronic rights permits them to sell ebooks without notifying the author or paying royalties, that's piracy.

The demonization of file-sharers? That's just a smokescreen to try to distract people from the real pirates.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Pardoz

Except for the part where you can't prove any economic loss to the author .....

Doesn't matter the pirate has obtained something he is not legally allowed to have.