They appear to have resolved the delivery problems for the Toronto Star to my Kobo Touch. There are still some niggly issues with the iPhone app, but from what I gather that is somehow specific to my Kobo account, and the fix will be at the server's end. (They managed to replicate it on their end, that somehow only 10 issues out of 14 are being delivered to my iPhone, not including the most recent 4 issues.)
I no longer see any reason to avoid subscribing to newspapers through Kobo at this time.
Quote:
I've been a subscriber through Kobo to the Toronto Star since June 2011. I WAS extremely happy with the service up until October. As I live outside Toronto, I'd have to pay $1.50 daily, $3.50 on Saturday, and $2.50 on Sunday, totalling approximately $54.00 (including tax) for a 28-day month. By paying Kobo $18.08 per month (including tax) instead, it was enough of a savings that I would have paid for my Kobo Touch in full just from the savings in just a matter of months.
However it is apparent that starting in October Kobo's networking infrastructure backend changed, and the systems supporting newspaper subscriptions suffered greatly as a result. Below are my specific complaints:
1- Many issues are missing. While I have been credited (by way of an extension) for most of the problems, I have still not been given any compensation for missing issues for Dec 16, Dec 27, Jan 3, Jan 19, and as of today's Jan 28 issue, it is also either unacceptably late or missing.
2- I also have an iPhone with the Kobo app. We are supposed to be able to read anything we own on any Kobo platform (whether Kobo Original, Wifi, Touch, Vox, Android, iOS, or any other platform). But for some reason the iPhone Kobo app will only download issues of the Toronto Star that I have manually deleted from my Kobo Touch. If I didn't have enough time to finish reading my paper I didn't have to bring my larger Kobo Touch along, I could finish reading on my iPhone, but no longer!
3- The Kobo website for subscriptions clearly states "Store credit lets you purchase eBooks, as well as electronic subscriptions to your favourite newspapers and magazines here in the Kobo Store." I have $61.01 credit, and my subscription only costs $18.08, but they charged my credit card instead of using my Kobo credit.
4- Each individual issue of the newspaper takes up precious disk space on my Kobo Touch. When I first subscribed, it automatically stored a total of 15 issues (two weeks' back issues plus the current day). It is no longer deleting old issues, and I was up to about 23 stored issues before I realized and started manually deleting some off the device.
5- In addition to the 15 stored issues from 4- above, more back issues could be saved longer if I marked them as "Saved" in the iOS app. (Unfortunately there is no way to mark issues as Saved on the Kobo Touch directly.) The iOS app itself would only keep a maximum of TEN issues total, including any issues I marked as "Saved". But not even this works now, and marking issues as Saved does NOT have any effect on either the Kobo Touch or iOS app, beyond removing an issue from the Trash on the iOS device before it gets deleted.
6- My subscription on the Kobo iPhone should be in only one folder. But it has been split into two separate pieces, one with issues up to Dec 4, and one with issues after Dec 4. Each folder has to be manually managed every time I sync. And when I manually delete an issue from one of those folders it needs to stay deleted! But they keep coming back every time I refresh. The oldest issue that keeps reappearing is from back in November!
As far as I am aware from other threads here at mobileread, I am not the only one suffering from these ongoing troubles with newspaper subscriptions. And additionally when I am missing a day's issue, so is everybody else regardless of which newspaper they subscribe to.
I have been in constant contact with help@kobobooks.com trying to get this resolved once and for all, but they are no longer answering my emails, and papers continue to go missing. It is beyond frustration that they continue to take my money but they aren't actually delivering to me what they have promised to sell.
In all, I cannot recommend that anybody else subscribe to any newspapers through Kobo.
If anybody else has any other problems with their newspaper subscriptions that I haven't mentioned, or if they would like to confirm that I am not the only one having troubles with subscriptions on their iOS or other platform, please reply below.
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