Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
I agree with you. This whole Walmart/Rakuten Kobo "partnership" seems to be strained. It seems like Walmart is usually the last to get in new stock. When Kobo has sales or introduces a new product. Walmart often delays the Kobo sale on their site (and then, often, keeps it going past the time Kobo returns to the normal price). It's like they're not on the same page. What's weird is that Walmart is the "go to" login for Kobo Books in the U.S. (like they're the official Kobo source in this country) but there doesn't seem to be any coordination between the two. I expected better when this partnership was announced. Maybe Kobo is simply selling more eReaders than they expected and Walmart is a big part of that – I guess that could be the positive spin.
I've got a feeling Walmart simply doesn't know when they'll get Kobo stock. So I wouldn't completely absolve Kobo in this.
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Please excuse the double post. rcentros' subsequent posts to my earlier one came while I was posting the one above...
There was a time when I could buy Kobo devices at my neighborhood bookstore. I wish their arrangement for the US were other than through Walmart. The Publishing Perspectives story linked to in the News thread says that Kobo has 10,000 brick and mortar stores selling their devices pre-pandemic. That's probably world-wide and the Walmart stores alone must account for a significant chunk of that. I was thinking Kobo was too small to manage all this, given their distant second fiddle to Amazon status and their not exactly top tier website for the ereaders. But it appears that they're quite a bit bigger than I'd realized. They still have staff working from home. Since they've sold so well recently, I'd guess that most of the support people are working. Why they don't make those support folks more available to the public with more than the most cursory info is kind of strange to me, but my perspective and interest is different than theirs, of course. I'd think that being responsive to the public would help them a lot more than what they're doing now. But maybe they figure they don't need the help.
Maybe I'll order from Kobo or Indigo and forget about the great sale price from Walmart. If it ever shows up, I'll have two. Someone else in the house would use one of them. I'd have already bought a Poke 2 by now because of all this. But they're not available for a few more weeks or more, either.