MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Kobo Discounts: Coupon Codes + Discussion

ATDrake · 11-14-2014, 07:53 PM

^
There's a bit of a basic guide to Kobo coupons that got written up for a Kindle user over in the Christian books megathread a couple of months ago.

But we only covered:

how to tell if books were couponable to begin with, and restrictions on coupons in general
setting up your account to use the checkout instead of 1-click buy
avoiding kepub-only or pdf books by using the Save Preview function to see which downloadable format (if any) there was
converting from ADE-DRM ePub to Mobi with the help of Alf & Calibre

and didn't get into any of the more advanced things.

ETA: While I'm posting, I might as well mention:

contest codes only stay valid for one week after the end of the contest (i.e., if a contest ended on Friday, then the codes are (usually) good through to the end of next Thursday, ETA: which may or may not also be tied to local time zones)

Lynx-lynx from Australia notes that contest codes may sometimes expire sooner than a week, so if there's anything you really want, you should probably pick it up within a few days of the contest's closing or even before.

My personal experience for the past three rounds of the contest involved last minute shopping sprees on stuff I'd decided to get right up until just before 9 PM Pacific Time on the "final" day the following week, and was able to get most of my planned purchases in time. But after 9 PM when I idly decided to test a code out on a title I'd been toying with but didn't urgently want, the codes no longer worked. So, for Canadian and US account holders, midnight EST Thursday for a Friday-ending contest seems to be the absolute limit you can expect.
contest codes have lately been restricted to the countries in which the contests are available (Canada, US, and UK), but as of the most recent round of the contest Canada-won codes can still be used in the US store and vice-versa (haven't tried UK ones yet)
"comeback" codes that Kobo occasionally sends people in their emails seem to still be usable in all countries, provided you're choosing generally eligible books
sometimes Kobo resets certain codes like the "welcome" codes and SAV50 every few months or so, making them reusable (in terms of being able to be used 1-time every few months, rather than over and over again like a standard unlimited usage code as they sometimes offer for the weekend sales, that is)

Lynx-lynx has a further comment about the possible nature of the "comeback" and SAV50 codes which may explain why they work the way they seem to.
Kobo electronic gift cards purchased online can only be applied to another Kobo store from which you can purchase electronic gift cards online (i.e. if you buy one in the Canadian store, you can apply it to the UK store, but not the US, which will give you an error when you try to redeem it)

(ETA: this is my experience from Canada to US and UK in separate non-traveling accounts, so YMMV, as others mention downthread that they've had success from other countries in recent months)

uhkp mentions that they've had success from the German to US store, Geralt has had success from UK to India, and bgalbrecht has travelled from Australia to the US store within the past few months, so this may possibly only apply to non-traveling usage (i.e., getting a gift card to send to someone else) or there may be browser issues involved (upthread someone noted that they had problems checking out a Kobo device purchase using a discount code until they switched to Chrome, IIRC)

tempest@de in Portugal reports that they buy the gift cards in the New Zealand store but changes the address upon checkout to the country where they intend to purchase the books (formerly India, now US) and are able to redeem successfully
Kobo gift cards purchased in a physical store seem to be applicable to countries which don't accept the electronic gift codes (i.e., if I want to top up my US account balance, I have to walk over to my nearest Chapters bookstore and buy a Kobo gift card, which then works when the e-gift-cards don't from separate Canada to US accounts for me)

BearMountainBooks and Fbone discuss possible reasons why electronic gift cards are not currently purchaseable from the US, and zelda.owns.link notes that Fry's Electronics offers physical Kobo gift card purchases in the States.
I can't confirm this, since I don't switch countries but instead keep separate accounts, just in case, but IIRC someone mentioned way upthread that a gift code balance applied to a particular country store was only available for that country store and that s/he couldn't access it when "traveling" and had to manage payment through other means

ETA: Geralt notes that in their recent experience, their gift card switched from rupees to UK pounds and back again in their account and was thus usable for them when traveling to and from India
the Kobo server (for the North American stores, at least) switches over at 12 AM Eastern Time, but prices start to fluctuate around 11 PM, and in that 1-hour window you can still get a sale book at the discount price if it was a 1-day special offer even if the listing has jumped back to full price, as long as you still see the discount price in your checkout (the Add to Cart & cart preview drop-down will show the list price at the time of adding, but it may change to the actual lower one once you start to checkout) before confirming your purchase

I do this all the time in Canada when I've been dithering about whether or not I really want that 1-day sale title and it's worked thus far. But I always keep a screenshot of my cart while it's processing and check my receipt afterwards, just in case.
this works both ways around: you may be fooled if you leave something in your cart and then come back to it later thinking it's still on sale because the cart preview says so, only to find that the price has changed and gone up when you try to checkout.

Once I left something too long in the UK store which I'd been hoping would last until the next contest came around and when I finally broke down to try one of the comeback codes on it, the cart said £1.99, but the checkout was £5-ish.
Sometimes when checking out with a lot of (non-couponable) items in your cart and paying by credit card, you will appear to have a freeze and then the purchase will appear to fail, with an error message about checking your payment method and it will return you to showing the items in your checkout cart.

This may actually mean that your purchase has gone through, so don't retry and wait about an hour for your receipt to show up and the items to propagate in your library.

This happened to me twice in Canada, the first time with about 80 99 cent-sale Agatha Christie titles, which seemed reasonable cause for freezing, the 2nd time with 5 $1.99 Simon & Schuster titles, which didn't.

In both cases it also meant that a cashback rebate I was expecting from one of those affiliate shopping services didn't go through, and I had to contact their support people about it.

NB: Purchasing 5 99-cent items in a single checkout using a gift card balance in the US store went through without any error messages, so it may simply be a credit card payment issue.
Sometimes when paying with Paypal you will receive an error message that Oops your payment could not go through (on a new page after checkout), please try again later. And when you check your Paypal account, you will see a listing for transaction pending.

This does not mean that you will necessarily actually get the book in your account, though the transaction may still go through and you will have to contact Kobo to a) get your money back or b) add the book to your library manually.

This happened to me in the US store twice, which is why I eventually ended up resorting to the e-gift-card attempt and thence the physical gift card route once I could no longer pay for my stuff using the Chapters Indigo cards which used to work in the old US checkout (and apparently still do, if you can follow the instructions for accessing the old checkout that someone posted somewhere upthread).

An additional caveat for gift card users and multi-tabbing:

Blue2u and sufue both note that they were not able to multi-tab when paying using a gift card balance. sufue further notes that she has to keep separate accounts, one in which she can multi-tab, and one in which there's a gift card balance, because apparently the balance blocks one's ability to multi-tab.

tempest@de reports being able to multi-tab using a gift card balance as of early November (in the US store, it seems), but not with Paypal

11-14-2014, 07:53 PM	#10885
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	^ There's a bit of a basic guide to Kobo coupons that got written up for a Kindle user over in the Christian books megathread a couple of months ago. But we only covered: how to tell if books were couponable to begin with, and restrictions on coupons in general setting up your account to use the checkout instead of 1-click buy avoiding kepub-only or pdf books by using the Save Preview function to see which downloadable format (if any) there was converting from ADE-DRM ePub to Mobi with the help of Alf & Calibre and didn't get into any of the more advanced things. ETA: While I'm posting, I might as well mention: contest codes only stay valid for one week after the end of the contest (i.e., if a contest ended on Friday, then the codes are (usually) good through to the end of next Thursday, ETA: which may or may not also be tied to local time zones) Lynx-lynx from Australia notes that contest codes may sometimes expire sooner than a week, so if there's anything you really want, you should probably pick it up within a few days of the contest's closing or even before. My personal experience for the past three rounds of the contest involved last minute shopping sprees on stuff I'd decided to get right up until just before 9 PM Pacific Time on the "final" day the following week, and was able to get most of my planned purchases in time. But after 9 PM when I idly decided to test a code out on a title I'd been toying with but didn't urgently want, the codes no longer worked. So, for Canadian and US account holders, midnight EST Thursday for a Friday-ending contest seems to be the absolute limit you can expect. contest codes have lately been restricted to the countries in which the contests are available (Canada, US, and UK), but as of the most recent round of the contest Canada-won codes can still be used in the US store and vice-versa (haven't tried UK ones yet) "comeback" codes that Kobo occasionally sends people in their emails seem to still be usable in all countries, provided you're choosing generally eligible books sometimes Kobo resets certain codes like the "welcome" codes and SAV50 every few months or so, making them reusable (in terms of being able to be used 1-time every few months, rather than over and over again like a standard unlimited usage code as they sometimes offer for the weekend sales, that is) Lynx-lynx has a further comment about the possible nature of the "comeback" and SAV50 codes which may explain why they work the way they seem to. Kobo electronic gift cards purchased online can only be applied to another Kobo store from which you can purchase electronic gift cards online (i.e. if you buy one in the Canadian store, you can apply it to the UK store, but not the US, which will give you an error when you try to redeem it) (ETA: this is my experience from Canada to US and UK in separate non-traveling accounts, so YMMV, as others mention downthread that they've had success from other countries in recent months) uhkp mentions that they've had success from the German to US store, Geralt has had success from UK to India, and bgalbrecht has travelled from Australia to the US store within the past few months, so this may possibly only apply to non-traveling usage (i.e., getting a gift card to send to someone else) or there may be browser issues involved (upthread someone noted that they had problems checking out a Kobo device purchase using a discount code until they switched to Chrome, IIRC) tempest@de in Portugal reports that they buy the gift cards in the New Zealand store but changes the address upon checkout to the country where they intend to purchase the books (formerly India, now US) and are able to redeem successfully Kobo gift cards purchased in a physical store seem to be applicable to countries which don't accept the electronic gift codes (i.e., if I want to top up my US account balance, I have to walk over to my nearest Chapters bookstore and buy a Kobo gift card, which then works when the e-gift-cards don't from separate Canada to US accounts for me) BearMountainBooks and Fbone discuss possible reasons why electronic gift cards are not currently purchaseable from the US, and zelda.owns.link notes that Fry's Electronics offers physical Kobo gift card purchases in the States. I can't confirm this, since I don't switch countries but instead keep separate accounts, just in case, but IIRC someone mentioned way upthread that a gift code balance applied to a particular country store was only available for that country store and that s/he couldn't access it when "traveling" and had to manage payment through other means ETA: Geralt notes that in their recent experience, their gift card switched from rupees to UK pounds and back again in their account and was thus usable for them when traveling to and from India the Kobo server (for the North American stores, at least) switches over at 12 AM Eastern Time, but prices start to fluctuate around 11 PM, and in that 1-hour window you can still get a sale book at the discount price if it was a 1-day special offer even if the listing has jumped back to full price, as long as you still see the discount price in your checkout (the Add to Cart & cart preview drop-down will show the list price at the time of adding, but it may change to the actual lower one once you start to checkout) before confirming your purchase I do this all the time in Canada when I've been dithering about whether or not I really want that 1-day sale title and it's worked thus far. But I always keep a screenshot of my cart while it's processing and check my receipt afterwards, just in case. this works both ways around: you may be fooled if you leave something in your cart and then come back to it later thinking it's still on sale because the cart preview says so, only to find that the price has changed and gone up when you try to checkout. Once I left something too long in the UK store which I'd been hoping would last until the next contest came around and when I finally broke down to try one of the comeback codes on it, the cart said £1.99, but the checkout was £5-ish. Sometimes when checking out with a lot of (non-couponable) items in your cart and paying by credit card, you will appear to have a freeze and then the purchase will appear to fail, with an error message about checking your payment method and it will return you to showing the items in your checkout cart. This may actually mean that your purchase has gone through, so don't retry and wait about an hour for your receipt to show up and the items to propagate in your library. This happened to me twice in Canada, the first time with about 80 99 cent-sale Agatha Christie titles, which seemed reasonable cause for freezing, the 2nd time with 5 $1.99 Simon & Schuster titles, which didn't. In both cases it also meant that a cashback rebate I was expecting from one of those affiliate shopping services didn't go through, and I had to contact their support people about it. NB: Purchasing 5 99-cent items in a single checkout using a gift card balance in the US store went through without any error messages, so it may simply be a credit card payment issue. Sometimes when paying with Paypal you will receive an error message that Oops your payment could not go through (on a new page after checkout), please try again later. And when you check your Paypal account, you will see a listing for transaction pending. This does not mean that you will necessarily actually get the book in your account, though the transaction may still go through and you will have to contact Kobo to a) get your money back or b) add the book to your library manually. This happened to me in the US store twice, which is why I eventually ended up resorting to the e-gift-card attempt and thence the physical gift card route once I could no longer pay for my stuff using the Chapters Indigo cards which used to work in the old US checkout (and apparently still do, if you can follow the instructions for accessing the old checkout that someone posted somewhere upthread). An additional caveat for gift card users and multi-tabbing: Blue2u and sufue both note that they were not able to multi-tab when paying using a gift card balance. sufue further notes that she has to keep separate accounts, one in which she can multi-tab, and one in which there's a gift card balance, because apparently the balance blocks one's ability to multi-tab. tempest@de reports being able to multi-tab using a gift card balance as of early November (in the US store, it seems), but not with Paypal Last edited by ATDrake; 11-16-2014 at 03:48 PM. Reason: Add qualification for e-gift-card online purchase applicability.