Quote:
Originally Posted by shadowboxer47
So, I'm about two steps away from chucking my Astak (and my mom's) on eBay and buying a Kindle. I cannot begin to tell you how frustrated I am. Here goes my rant, after another extremely frustrating evening.
I receive mine in the mail. It was wonderful. I downloaded Calibre and life was good. I read through several non-encrypted novels. I loved it. I loved it so much, I bought one for my (very non technical) mom for her birthday. I was even thinking of buying one for my wife.
To my dismay, it arrived DOA. My mom called technical support. The individual spoke way over her head and confused her. She asked to speak to a (much nicer) manager, and eventually got Astak to send a box for a return. (Over a week or so later... still no box).
Next, since I was going on a trip, I thought I would buy a book or two. And what's this? Astak has opened their own eBook store! Awesome! I buy two books.
Guess what? The store isn't ready yet. Talk about premature! One of the books never appeared. The other failed to authenticate through Adobe.  I spend several hours trying to get them to work. I'm wasting my time. I send the store an e-mail. After the weekend is over, I receive an e-mail that says, "whoops! We weren't really ready yet, even though our store and certain books are STILL ONLINE, we have no idea when we can get you yours. Perhaps we can give you a refund."
Fine. I understand hickups. However, since I'm leaving for my trip to Orlando tomorrow, I ask for a refund and decide to go to Books on Board. Hey, look they have one of the books I want! In several formats. Good, because I don't want to screw with Adobe again. I get the eReader format. Astak does say their device supports it. So I shouldn't have a problem, right?
 WRONG! NO support for the drm files. I can read it on my Mac, but I cannot transfer it to my EZReader. I've spent the last two hours desperately trying to get this to work. To no avail.
I've about had it. I'm in the hole $30, and I don't have a new book on my device. I'm afraid to buy one anywhere else because of DRM compatibility. I've lost trust in this device.
At least with a Kindle, I can get less expensive books right away, without issue.  |
Dear Shadowboxer:
I am here to help as I work for Astak. You could have sent me a PM and I could have acted.
We do NOT send out boxes to people. We send out postage-paid labels only on rare occasions. Never boxes. I do apologize if our tech confused your mom. I would have been happy to talk with her. I hate that techie-talk stuff anyway and am very kind and easy with phones. Maybe I did talk with her. I do remember someone asking for me after the tech could not please them. If so, we DID send out the postage-paid label that same day to her email.
Our eBook site is working fine. What is not working fine is something known as an Agency Model. This was out of our hands as five publishers are making an attempt to fully control pricing. It left our wholesaler for content completely off guard and this happened overnight. We still do not know the Agency Model prices. Nor does Books On Board. We do not even have a list of the titles affected. As such, most eBooks are selling fine on our site but some are held up until we can get a list of the titles affected and what price the publishers demand they be priced at. This has been talked about greatly on this forum as the Agency Model by 5 publishers affects everything. Again, we were NOT pre-mature. The Agency Model by the five publishers has everybody up in arms!
I am sorry that you are unhappy. This is the first time I heard of your displeasure.
It has been mentioned on this forum at least 50 times that ereader is a format owned by Barnes&Noble. We DO support their non-DRM format... but they will not allow us to get their DRM format. Our own eBook Store carries ONLY PDF and EPUB... not ereader titles.
Can you send me a PM so I can help you? What were the titles that you had a problem with on our site?? We will check that out immediately. If you were charged, we can reimburse promptly. We DO want you to be happy; but I need more info to be of help!
I AM sorry that we caused you grief.
Bob