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Tracey · 04-16-2009, 12:42 PM

Hi everyone, as promised here is the mail i sent to Waterstones and their reply. I give them credit for answering promptly, and without resorting to templates, but i am still disappointed with their views on pricing. Apologies that it is a long one. I have replied to the lady from head office again so will see if i get a further response.

My original mail -

Dear Sir/ Madam,

I would like to raise some specific points in relation to the provision of eBooks to the UK market place, particularly with regards to the fact that Waterstones have an exclusive agreement with Sony and all UK purchased PRS-505 owners are directed to your website.

1. I regularly receive discount offers from Waterstones via email but the purchase of eBooks are excluded from this offer. Can you please explain why this is?

2. I believe the eBook market in the UK is significantly greater than you perceive it to be. It is apparent from the forums on MobileRead, an online group for those who have specific interest in e-reader technology, that many thousands of pounds worth of books are being purchased through alternative companies. This competition to your sales is not just from overseas retailers; WH Smith for example, are competing competitively in the UK. I would respectfully suggest that this leads you to believe that sales are low and therefore there is no need to be competitive but, i can assure you, the sales are buoyant but your pricing policy is preventing customers from buying from you.

3. It is also the increasing perception of UK users that your Customer Service Team are not willing to address specific issues raised with them. There are examples being posted on MobileRead of standard responses being sent, rather than answers to questions raised, being provided. I can assure you, as a manager in the Customer Service industry for the past 25 years, that this is one of the most frustrating situations a customer can encounter; please revisit this policy as your reputation is being severely impacted and people are not afraid of sharing their negative opinions with others.

4. Given that i take the trouble to buy GiftCards for Sony's USA bookstore, via PayPal, and have a separate laptop to load their software on, i trust this proves the commitment i have to buy eBooks and i wish to assure you that i am far from unique in this regard. I would like to make a suggestion that you revisit the eBook pricing, even for a limited period of say two months, and see what difference is made to the volumes you sell. I would be very happy to make this known on MobileRead so that visitors to the site are aware of the promotion. There are in excess of 34,000 members worldwide and many more guests who view the site. At this moment in time, i can see there are 277 guests online.

5. Please feel free to have a look at the website yourselves to gauge opinion. Here is a link to the forums - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ I would be happy to set up a poll to ask people why they do not buy from Waterstones and to determine who would if the pricing was to be improved upon. One of the latest threads, entitled "More disappointment with Waterstones" has been read by 1153 people at present.

6. Finally, there is also continued criticism of how difficult it is to search for eBooks on the Waterstones website. Can you please advise of what is being planned to address this?

7. Please accept this email in the spirit it is intended. I simply want to buy UK books at a competitive price and to support a UK business. Can i please ask that your reply answers the specific points i have raised and advise you that i would be happy to discuss further by telephone if required. I believe strongly that every business deserves the opportunity to make changes to address the concerns of its existing and potential customer base and this is why i am contacting yourselves rather than Sony at this time.

I would appreciate an acknowledgement of the receipt of this email and an indication of when i can expect to receive a detailed reply please.

Their reply -

My name is ****** and I work at Waterstone's Head Office. Your email was forwarded to me by our customer service team.

Thank you for your feedback; it is always helpful to us to read comments/ suggestions from customers as it helps us to improve our service.

In response to your questions:

As with traditional books, the RRP of each eBook title is dictated by the publisher of the eBook. Waterstone's is working with all publishers to agree what is the appropriate price for an eBook. In the meantime, Waterstone's will discount all eBook titles to try and offer the best possible value to our customers. This continuing discount means that when Waterstone's offer extra savings for a particular period, we are not in the position to reduce the price of eBooks any further.

It is also up to publishers which books are converted into the epub format for sale on Waterstones.com, and we expect that as the popularity of eBooks grows, the number of available titles will continue to increase.

With regards to the standard responses used by our customer service centre, the agents are given templates to work by however I realise that they can cause frustration to customers such as yourself who have asked specific questions and get standard answers. The use of templates is something that I am personally working to abolish at the moment but would like to apologise in the meantime for the frustration.

All prices of eBooks are set by the publishers, but as a general guideline they should be around the same price as a hardback or cheaper. At Waterstones.com we are making every effort to offer our customers good value on this new format, therefore you will often find reductions from the RRP on our site. eBook pricing is something that is likely to change as time goes by, as the format becomes more popular and more publishers choose to provide books in this format. Inline with this we are constantly talking to publishers about making sure we offer our customers the best value possible.

I am sorry you have struggled with the search engine on our website, we are currently working on improving the way you can search for e-books and place orders online. We do have an advanced search tool at the top left of the Waterstones.com homepage, if you click on Advanced search, then select format and then eBooks, you can enter either title, author or keywords to help find one of the 6,000 eBooks. We are currently making the availability for eBooks up to 25,000 downloads which will benefit Sony Reader owners immensely.

Please be assured that improving the search functionality on the site is a priority for our business both in the immediate future and going forward into 2009, when we hope you will be pleased with the upgrades which we implement.

I hope that this answers your questions and if there is anything else I can assist you with please do not hesitate to ask.

04-16-2009, 12:42 PM	#44
Tracey Connoisseur Posts: 67 Karma: 68 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Wilburton, Ely Device: Sony PRS-505	Hi everyone, as promised here is the mail i sent to Waterstones and their reply. I give them credit for answering promptly, and without resorting to templates, but i am still disappointed with their views on pricing. Apologies that it is a long one. I have replied to the lady from head office again so will see if i get a further response. My original mail - Dear Sir/ Madam, I would like to raise some specific points in relation to the provision of eBooks to the UK market place, particularly with regards to the fact that Waterstones have an exclusive agreement with Sony and all UK purchased PRS-505 owners are directed to your website. 1. I regularly receive discount offers from Waterstones via email but the purchase of eBooks are excluded from this offer. Can you please explain why this is? 2. I believe the eBook market in the UK is significantly greater than you perceive it to be. It is apparent from the forums on MobileRead, an online group for those who have specific interest in e-reader technology, that many thousands of pounds worth of books are being purchased through alternative companies. This competition to your sales is not just from overseas retailers; WH Smith for example, are competing competitively in the UK. I would respectfully suggest that this leads you to believe that sales are low and therefore there is no need to be competitive but, i can assure you, the sales are buoyant but your pricing policy is preventing customers from buying from you. 3. It is also the increasing perception of UK users that your Customer Service Team are not willing to address specific issues raised with them. There are examples being posted on MobileRead of standard responses being sent, rather than answers to questions raised, being provided. I can assure you, as a manager in the Customer Service industry for the past 25 years, that this is one of the most frustrating situations a customer can encounter; please revisit this policy as your reputation is being severely impacted and people are not afraid of sharing their negative opinions with others. 4. Given that i take the trouble to buy GiftCards for Sony's USA bookstore, via PayPal, and have a separate laptop to load their software on, i trust this proves the commitment i have to buy eBooks and i wish to assure you that i am far from unique in this regard. I would like to make a suggestion that you revisit the eBook pricing, even for a limited period of say two months, and see what difference is made to the volumes you sell. I would be very happy to make this known on MobileRead so that visitors to the site are aware of the promotion. There are in excess of 34,000 members worldwide and many more guests who view the site. At this moment in time, i can see there are 277 guests online. 5. Please feel free to have a look at the website yourselves to gauge opinion. Here is a link to the forums - https://www.mobileread.com/forums/ I would be happy to set up a poll to ask people why they do not buy from Waterstones and to determine who would if the pricing was to be improved upon. One of the latest threads, entitled "More disappointment with Waterstones" has been read by 1153 people at present. 6. Finally, there is also continued criticism of how difficult it is to search for eBooks on the Waterstones website. Can you please advise of what is being planned to address this? 7. Please accept this email in the spirit it is intended. I simply want to buy UK books at a competitive price and to support a UK business. Can i please ask that your reply answers the specific points i have raised and advise you that i would be happy to discuss further by telephone if required. I believe strongly that every business deserves the opportunity to make changes to address the concerns of its existing and potential customer base and this is why i am contacting yourselves rather than Sony at this time. I would appreciate an acknowledgement of the receipt of this email and an indication of when i can expect to receive a detailed reply please. Their reply - My name is ****** and I work at Waterstone's Head Office. Your email was forwarded to me by our customer service team. Thank you for your feedback; it is always helpful to us to read comments/ suggestions from customers as it helps us to improve our service. In response to your questions: As with traditional books, the RRP of each eBook title is dictated by the publisher of the eBook. Waterstone's is working with all publishers to agree what is the appropriate price for an eBook. In the meantime, Waterstone's will discount all eBook titles to try and offer the best possible value to our customers. This continuing discount means that when Waterstone's offer extra savings for a particular period, we are not in the position to reduce the price of eBooks any further. It is also up to publishers which books are converted into the epub format for sale on Waterstones.com, and we expect that as the popularity of eBooks grows, the number of available titles will continue to increase. With regards to the standard responses used by our customer service centre, the agents are given templates to work by however I realise that they can cause frustration to customers such as yourself who have asked specific questions and get standard answers. The use of templates is something that I am personally working to abolish at the moment but would like to apologise in the meantime for the frustration. All prices of eBooks are set by the publishers, but as a general guideline they should be around the same price as a hardback or cheaper. At Waterstones.com we are making every effort to offer our customers good value on this new format, therefore you will often find reductions from the RRP on our site. eBook pricing is something that is likely to change as time goes by, as the format becomes more popular and more publishers choose to provide books in this format. Inline with this we are constantly talking to publishers about making sure we offer our customers the best value possible. I am sorry you have struggled with the search engine on our website, we are currently working on improving the way you can search for e-books and place orders online. We do have an advanced search tool at the top left of the Waterstones.com homepage, if you click on Advanced search, then select format and then eBooks, you can enter either title, author or keywords to help find one of the 6,000 eBooks. We are currently making the availability for eBooks up to 25,000 downloads which will benefit Sony Reader owners immensely. Please be assured that improving the search functionality on the site is a priority for our business both in the immediate future and going forward into 2009, when we hope you will be pleased with the upgrades which we implement. I hope that this answers your questions and if there is anything else I can assist you with please do not hesitate to ask.