Quote:
Originally Posted by neilmarr
Thanks, Florence. I think you know my feeling about customers being expected to jump through hoops to legitimately buy a book. I won't play. If there's a grain of truth in the old, old excuse the massive online stores glibly use to justify geographical restrictions, let them simply open sales websites in those countries outside the USA where they peddle their hardware and sell European, Australian, etc editions. You know how much I always appreciate your advice, Florence, so please don't take my wee moan as anything more than a rant against an industry which seems hell bent on encouraging the very piracy they complain so much about by treating their customers with utter contempt. Very best. Neil
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No problem, I understand your frustration.
Being French, for me contempt for the customer is the normal state of things, so I'm not as shocked
In fact, I understand that for a US on-line store, foreign customers may be more trouble than they're worth. I am less shocked by Fictionwise's position (they are the worst, at some point practically all their books were geo-restricted) that I am at Amazon's, who won't sell to me just because I don't have their device, or will only sell to me under the condition that I can't read their books on my Opus. But I guess we all have our pet rants
I also resent having to lie to buy what I want, but I could also do what I've been doing for years, go to expensive bookshops in Paris for English language paper books, or (more recently) use Amazon.fr. It's frustrating as heck seeing all those books right before my nose and knowing I can't buy some of them, but it's still much, much better than the situation I was in 10 years ago, where the only way to find English language books was to buy them as expensive paper books that ended up cluttering my living space
