Quote:
Originally Posted by apastuszak
I called Rakuten, and they told me you can buy Kobos at Best Buy and Walmart. I called every Best Buy and Walmart near me and none of them have any Kobo readers. Called them back again and the woman on the phone told me she can clearly see them for sale on Walmart's website. My attempt to explain that those are all third party sellers went on deaf ears.
Are these available retail anywhere?
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To the best of my knowledge there is nowhere you can just drop in and buy a Clara today (I guess it's possible that in a few select markets Walmart has them in store). Best Buy in the US hasn't carried Kobo in years, AFAIK Best Buy in Canada still does. Kindle can be found at BestBuy, Target and many Staples & Office Max/Depot stores. They've also been available at Whole Foods, although that may have been only during the holidays. Nook of course can be had at B&N stores.
Back in the early days of Kobo devices they were sold at B&M stores in the US (BestBuy, Borders, Frys), but that availability started dying of with the demise of Borders in 2011 (IIRC BestBuy dropped them around this time too). Then for a while they could be found at Family Christian stores (they went into bankruptcy around 2015 IIRC, but had dropped Kobo's by then). Then Kobo setup a deal around 2013 where indie bookstores could sell their devices. Other than a few specific situations/stores in a few cities this never really took off. Then Kobo and Walmart teamed up fairly recently, but it doesn't seem to be a full on effort.