FWIW, I don't think Kobo is a "Mickey Mouse company".
I do think that they were, perhaps, a bit under prepared for the launch of this particular product and for the demand. I think the problems with people's orders are due to that--the technical infrastructure (their ordering system, servers, whatever) obviously was not up to the demand. I also wonder if they had hired on a bunch of new off-shore staff, some of whom also seemed unprepared for a whole slew of phone calls. I also think that someone else's name and address ending up in my address book may have been the result of someone manually attempting to 'fix' my problem and doing so in haste. They were trying to find an order I had placed, but they had no record of it or even my e-mail address or my name and they were dealing with a disgruntled customer--me. With the language barrier involved, the first name of the person whose name was in my address book could resemble mine, as they both end with the same sound, although none of the other information was even close. I had a great deal of trouble getting the call center staff to comprehend the e-mail addresses I was telling them and I had to repeat it several times. They had thick accents, and I suppose to their ears,
I was the one with the thick accent.
I think they had as much trouble understanding me as I had in understanding them.
Once I found this board, though, and through this board the address of someone actually
in Canada, that's the contact person I stuck with and this is the person I will call should there be any further problems with my order. Right now I am waiting for the refund to show up on my credit card account.
I guess if you're going to use off-shore call centers, the staff there need to be better trained. They also need to be tested on their comprehension of the language--including the accents--of the customers they are serving.
And, unfortunately, large companies seem to insist on using such call centers.
It was odd, too, the manner in which the Vox was launched in that a whole bunch of retailers actually had the item on hand on launch day, yet people who ordered directly from Kobo had problems with their orders as well as shipping delays. Why were the pre-orders to individual customers not given priority? Had those customers received shipping notices on the 28th of October, they wouldn't have been high-tailing it to their nearest Best Buy or Future Shop to pick up their shiny new Voxes and then frantically trying to cancel their online orders--with limited success, I might add--with Kobo.
My husband has speculated that staffing numbers at Kobo were deliberately kept lean because of the pending sale to the Japanese company--your bottom line looks more attractive if you're spending less on salaries. I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but I do expect things at Kobo to settle down and improve within the next few months.