Quote:
Originally Posted by preempalver
If true, this approach is unbelievably awkward, if not suicidal for a company, since it's pretty clear that users here are from all over the world. well... *shrugs* we all have problems.
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Well, there is very good reason that most companies avoid ANY contact with the userbase in the form of forum discussions and similar means. You only very seldom see Amazon, Sony, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Apple or any other representative openly discussing their products on third-party forums.
If you promise *anything* and it is later changed, delayed or canceled you have lots of angry users complaining very loudly. And things *do* get changed, delayed or canceled in real life due to circumstances you can not affect.
Also, even for the most successful products there is very small fraction of the userbase that is not satisfied. And such discussion forum like this works as a focus for such rightly or wrongly dissatisfied people. It takes only a small handful of nasty complainers to ruin a good thing for the vast majority of people that are extremely happy to have direct discussion with a company representative.
PocketBook company did have (and still has) close contact with their userbase through the russian speaking forum the-ebook.org/forum . This is what sets them apart. This is why PB301 and 360 were such great products. Their design and software speciffication were created with cooperation with forum members.
mtravellerh was (and perhaps still is) a representative of a PocketBook *distributor* for Germany and the rest of EU. (the situation has changed and his company became part of PocketBook company, I think, but I do not have any more info). Sometimes he promised things that he had very good reason to believe were going to happen (such as testing a beta version of a new feature), and later the company changed the plans and some things, such as keyboard support for PB302 never materialized.
There was also big backlash when PocketBook started to sell readers in USA for prices significantly lower than in Europe or even their home turf - Ukraine. Situation was further aggravated by the fact that they sold PB360PLUS for much lower price in USA than PB360 here. PB360 wasn't sold in Europe at all. And distributors in USA were strictly forbidden to sell to EU.