the hassle of changing emails

[anacreon]

I needed to change my very old email, with which I had registered on Fnac (in 2007) and on Kobo probably in 2013 when I bought my first kobo reader: since its provider was last bought out, it was becoming iffy at best.

So I changed it on Fnac, easily and apparently with no problem, and I went on to Kobo where it seemed impossible. I opened a chat, and since it was complex, after a while was offered a call which I took up. The man, with a charming French-Canadian accent, discovered that I had opened an account with the email I wanted substituted to in 2011 (that's when I bought my first reader ever, a Sony), and had bought a few books with it. I had completely forgotten it, and the password of course. He created a new password, merged the books and left me to create my own new password on Kobo (easy), and update my reader.

That turned out awful: it seemed ok at first, but when I tried to go on, I was told I must associate it with my Kobo account, and when I did that, was told it was impossible because both belonged together or some such twaddle.

I gave up after a few tries, and started again this morning, when I was informed "ERROR" and ousted. I saw that I had 2 Go available instead of 0,9 before, so some books but not all - I thought it was all or nothing in those cases.

I started a new chat, with another guy, and saw I was still seen with my old email. The man told me I still had two accounts, and he would merge them and eliminate the old one when the current maintenance was done.

The man from yesterday called me an hour later and asked me how it went. I gave him the reference of my latest chat and explained. He told me he had checked yesterday evening that the old email was closed and the books merged, and that he would see to it that it disappeared also from other occurrences.
He then took me step by step through my registering my kobo. He told me I had to register with Kobo, which would prevent my current problems, helped me find how (Fnac tries to put it under the carpet), and explained that I wouldn't lose those few books I bought directly from Fnac, since they were all registered with my Kobo books.

Well and good. The result
* 729 books instead of 4985 (1 more Go available)
* my patches are still active, and my fonts all present
* I lost my words, my saved screens, my parameters, my custom dictionaries, most of my dictionaries, but still had en-fr and fr dictionaries but nl-fr instead of en-en dictionary

* Fnac reappeared in the affiliate file.

One strange thing: in the parameters for energy saving, the part about sleep and turning off has disappeared.

I will do a full reset and hope for a clean slate. I have time with confinement, but I would prefer to do better things, lire reading.


It is pleasant though to discover that Kobo is still somewhat Canadian, with some very helpful people.