After getting the following message from Kobo yesteday, I decided to give them one more shot:
"Thank you for contacting Tier 2 Kobo Customer Care.
Please accept our apologies for the ongoing inconvenience and misunderstandings.
Of course we do not expect a customer to get in touch with Worldpay or other payment providers.
We are now in touch with Worldpay and are investigating the matter.
At this point it seems that there is a broken connection between [XXXX] and Worldpay.
We kindly ask you to use a different credit card if possible until this issue has been resolved.
We will contact you after we received an update on this issue.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience in this matter.
Sincerely,
The Kobo Team"
I again tried a different credit card, and lo and behold, this time, it actually worked. I'm still hoping for a resolution for the original card as my backup card calls to confirm every single transaction out-of-state, let alone out of the country - not a bad thing, but it is a bit of a damper on spur-of-the-moment book buys. Still, at least I finally got a response from Kobo in which they took responsibility for their own problems.
Not exactly earth-shattering news, but I'm posting this for all the other folks who are caught in customer service hell - sometimes, persistence does pay off, and I hope those poor souls who have really been put upon will see light at the end of the tunnel. Good luck!
