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ATDrake · 12-24-2010, 10:58 PM

Welcome to MobileRead, lainey!

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with Kobo. But yeah, their CS has tended to suck as of late, and unexpected growth is no excuse for handling cases so badly as well as belatedly.

Perhaps you might like to contact your credit card company and file a dispute, if you haven't already. Services or merchandise not received or not as advertised or incompatible or something like that, especially if you also have a non-Kobo reader now.

I'm having a similar experience, in part involving one short story that was mispriced as a full-length (and full-cost) book (they've since fixed it in the listings) that also happened to be included within another book that was purchased on the same day.

I phoned up the helpline within 15 minutes of "purchase" once I realized the mistake and deleted said mistake from the Purchased list to the Trash in my account without downloading. And the phone lady was very nice and helpful and said "Sure we can cancel that, just let me set up a web ticket for the people who take care of these things".

A month later and no response to any of the follow-up status requests I sent once a week, they finally show up to say "oh noes, that's (gasp!) against company policy!!!!!" after I got fed up and turned the case over to my credit card company.

Guess it takes the prospect of the money going away to get them to respond.

Really, if the phone person got it wrong and they do an immediate apologetic "Sorry, it turns out we can't do that for these reasons" on the web ticket, that's one thing.

But to keep customers in limbo for weeks on end (months in your case), ignore all queries to at least check on how things are going, and only bother to reply in order to try and weasel out once it looks like they're going to be called to account…

I used to recommend Kobo all over the place as a great store to buy books from, what with the frequent coupon deals, among other things. And I suppose I still will, given that the coupon deals are pretty good.

But it'll come with a definite caveat emptor rider from now on and as for myself, I'll only get free books and perhaps use up the Chapters gift cards I've received when there's the rare 50%/$3 off coupon available, always provided they don't shut down my account once the CC chargeback goes through.

Or maybe I'd be better off spending them on the sales table in the physical stores, given that Kobo's website may be glitchy when applying them, and their CS response to errors is certainly not inspiring confidence.

12-24-2010, 10:58 PM	#17
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	Welcome to MobileRead, lainey! I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with Kobo. But yeah, their CS has tended to suck as of late, and unexpected growth is no excuse for handling cases so badly as well as belatedly. Perhaps you might like to contact your credit card company and file a dispute, if you haven't already. Services or merchandise not received or not as advertised or incompatible or something like that, especially if you also have a non-Kobo reader now. I'm having a similar experience, in part involving one short story that was mispriced as a full-length (and full-cost) book (they've since fixed it in the listings) that also happened to be included within another book that was purchased on the same day. I phoned up the helpline within 15 minutes of "purchase" once I realized the mistake and deleted said mistake from the Purchased list to the Trash in my account without downloading. And the phone lady was very nice and helpful and said "Sure we can cancel that, just let me set up a web ticket for the people who take care of these things". A month later and no response to any of the follow-up status requests I sent once a week, they finally show up to say "oh noes, that's (gasp!) against company policy!!!!!" after I got fed up and turned the case over to my credit card company. Guess it takes the prospect of the money going away to get them to respond. Really, if the phone person got it wrong and they do an immediate apologetic "Sorry, it turns out we can't do that for these reasons" on the web ticket, that's one thing. But to keep customers in limbo for weeks on end (months in your case), ignore all queries to at least check on how things are going, and only bother to reply in order to try and weasel out once it looks like they're going to be called to account… I used to recommend Kobo all over the place as a great store to buy books from, what with the frequent coupon deals, among other things. And I suppose I still will, given that the coupon deals are pretty good. But it'll come with a definite caveat emptor rider from now on and as for myself, I'll only get free books and perhaps use up the Chapters gift cards I've received when there's the rare 50%/$3 off coupon available, always provided they don't shut down my account once the CC chargeback goes through. Or maybe I'd be better off spending them on the sales table in the physical stores, given that Kobo's website may be glitchy when applying them, and their CS response to errors is certainly not inspiring confidence. Last edited by ATDrake; 12-24-2010 at 11:07 PM. Reason: A little less wanton abuse of the common comma during the Airing of the Grievances. Merry Festivus, everyone!