Hi Turtletots,
1. When you are looking at a list of books at
www.kobobooks.com, at the bottom of each book listing will be a small blue lowercase 'i' with a circle around it. Click on that, and then click on "save for later". That will give you a free preview then the next time you sync your iphone/ipad/kobo.
2. probably because the kobo system is pretty f-ed up right now (has been for the month of november, and looks like it's continuiing).
3. same as above. you can call/email Kobo for customer service help, but because everything is all f-ed up you're looking at an hour wait on the phone, or a couple weeks before they reply to your email (based on my experience). I also have missing awards, and the response thus far has been something along the lines of "Sorry to hear that. We continue to work on fixing the problem". But nothing's been fixed, so....
Good luck!