Quote:
Originally Posted by Anak
An average user doesn't contact the company, posts on the internet, fora or blogs.
An average user simply stops using the product if it doesn't meet up to its expectations regardless if it is (relatively) easy to fix (e.g. by a firmware update) or not (e.g. hardware limitations/constrains).
And probably also tell their friends about their product experience ("don't by product X of company Y".)
But never contact the company to inform is their negative user experience can be solved.
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What I find is that I get asked about ereader issues by my co-workers as well as family, friends, neighbours and people who know someone who knows me. For the most part, I offer what help I can thought that has often simply resulted in me checking various fora for solutions. Only a small minority will want to contact the manufacturer for support -- almost everyone has their horror stories about bad experiences with customer disservice, most would simply write off the whole ereading business as a waste of their time.
For some it's turned a negative experience into a positive, for others, the problem is not easily solvable such as one friend who was given a Paperwhite by her family and discovered she couldn't download books from the local library (no Kindle support as yet for bclibrary.ca). The only option was to swap ereaders for one that supported epub format (actually, pdf as well but while a lot of the library book collection are in epub and pdf with some in epub only but there seem to be none in pdf only). She's as happy with the Glo as she was with the Paperwhite for reading because she can crank up the font size to read in bed without her glasses but she did prefer the way the Paperwhite felt in her hands. Baby duckling syndrome?
Overall, I'd have to say most of the people I meet are reading one to four ebooks a month either by purchase or via library loans. A very different group from most of those posting here who have hundreds if not thousands of ebooks in their collection. However, those books per month are likely to be purchased from Kobo and the pennies add up.
Regards,
David