[Marcy]

I ordered the Terra Incognita ebook from Barnes & Noble on Tuesday night. As soon as I ordered it I tried to download it and was told "This title is unavailable to download. Either your payment method was declined, a refund was issued, or charge-back was applied to this item. Contact our Customer Service..."

I immediately called American Express and was told that the charge was approved and already had come through my account.

I called B&N. Closed for the night. Waited for the next day but forgot to call until evening and again closed for the night. Called this morning and after an interminable wait (almost 10 minutes) was told their system is having a "delay" in processing payments and when it's fixed my book will be available.

This has got to be the most unbelievable bit of ecommerce I've ever encountered. How can B&N expect to compete with ebooks with this sort of thing? One of the attractions to ebooks is instant gratification—I buy the book and get it now. It boggles my mind that almost 2 days later they are still "processing" my payment even though Amex processed it instantly.

I'd expect this from some fly-by-night small website, but not from a large company.

Mind, I'm not ranting since I have tons of other books to read and am not stressed by the 99¢ I paid. I'm just amazed that in the increasingly competive ebook market that B&N could allow a problem like this go on so long. Not only don't I have the book I bought, but I've also wasted 30 minutes of my time called Amex and B&N. Not the way to build up customer loyalty.

-Marcy