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With all the confusion of having to scour around for books I'm geographically allowed to buy now, I've spent the past week or so cataloguing my ebooks, noting all the different formats and the different shops and applications associated with them. Honestly, I almost need a separate department for this! I think wistfully of the years when I could just turn to Fictionwise, buy everything I needed or wanted, and have it all tidily catalogued on my Bookshelf. <sigh>
Anyway, while doing this cataloguing, I did find a few books I hadn't saved to the ebook hierarchy I'd created on my hard disk (backed up nightly, thankfully). This number was probably 100 out of 1200 ebooks from Fictionwise. Out of those, about 20 would not re-download from my Bookshelf. The error messages varied: some were Secure Mobipocket books called from an outside server which didn't respond (as others have mentioned), but most were the "territorial restrictions" message. I live in Australia, and I still find it difficult to understand why that should mean I can't buy an ebook from a shopfront available internationally, especially when it means I can't keep buying books from the same author, or even from the same series. <fume>
Anyway, luckily I had saved all my purchased ebooks in a download folder, and it was just a matter of going through them: time-consuming with so many books, but I did find all the ones I couldn't download. Backup because you can't trust the retailers (it's a sad message).
I'm intrigued by mentions in this thread of people receiving emails from Fictionwise. I've been a Buywise member and keen customer for years now, and the only emails I receive from Fictionwise are their newsletter and New Books Alerts (or Pre-Ordered Books Alerts). I've never received a receipt email, nor a response to any of the handful of customer service requests I've put in through their web interface.
Obviously they know my email address, since they send me the newsletters etc., but in my case, they've been incommunicative from the start. :S
Everytime I've followed an ebook search to Barnes and Noble, they've said the title "is only delivered to U.S. addresses", which is rather silly in the I.P. sense, and thoroughly frustrating for the customer. Do they want our money, or not?
So: I'm sad about Fictionwise, and definitely underwhelmed by B&N. :S
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