No refund for book with crippled cover

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by afv011

Storm in a tea cup...

To some yes, but not the OP. The bottom line is, mgmueller spent his/her cash on a product and wasn't entirely happy with it.

End result, the item has been fixed and he/she can now re-download it. Hopefully that means he/she is a happy customer & Kobo have shown they will listen and respond to a complaint. Everyone's a winner.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by afv011

Storm in a tea cup...

How much do you spend for eBooks?
I've spent ca. € 20.000 over the last 3 years:
500 x Kindle, 300 x nook, 180 x Kobo, 300 x Sony, 300 x PDFs, 300 x ePUBs.
Adding my hardware, that's an invest of ca. € 1.200 per month.
I think, for such an amount (many spend less for their car or house) one can expect top quality.
I know: I'm nitpicking. But, as you can see by the figures above, collecting is one of my hobbies. And I simply don't want to check every single book for flaws.
And that's just eBooks.
In addition, I could worry about 2.000 iOS apps, 1.500 Android apps, 2.000 iTunes movies and so on...
I buy all this stuff, instead of downloading illegally, exactly to not have to worry about quality...
A big tea cup, I guess...
Often, I read a book or watch a movie only years after I bought it. I can't ask for a refund then, often the companies that sold it even don't exist anymore. I simply have to rely, what I buy is of the quality to be expected...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by lessthanyouthink

I'm happy to report that the cover images have been fixed for this book, and the four others by the same author that I noticed had the same issue. It may take a bit to propagate through the system, but I'm seeing the correct images now.

I'm also not sure how our other devices/apps handle updated cover images, but our iOS app will check for new ones every two weeks. If you remove and re-add the book from your library/devices you should see the new cover appear when the book is re-added.

Working on the Android app.
Thanks a lot!

[lessthanyouthink]

Sounds more like a tea-cauldron to me

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Working on the Android app.
Thanks a lot!

Happy to help!

[afv011]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

How much do you spend for eBooks?
I've spent ca. € 20.000 over the last 3 years:
500 x Kindle, 300 x nook, 180 x Kobo, 300 x Sony, 300 x PDFs, 300 x ePUBs.
Adding my hardware, that's an invest of ca. € 1.200 per month.
I think, for such an amount (many spend less for their car or house) one can expect top quality.
I know: I'm nitpicking. But, as you can see by the figures above, collecting is one of my hobbies. And I simply don't want to check every single book for flaws.
And that's just eBooks.
In addition, I could worry about 2.000 iOS apps, 1.500 Android apps, 2.000 iTunes movies and so on...
I buy all this stuff, instead of downloading illegally, exactly to not have to worry about quality...
A big tea cup, I guess...
Often, I read a book or watch a movie only years after I bought it. I can't ask for a refund then, often the companies that sold it even don't exist anymore. I simply have to rely, what I buy is of the quality to be expected...

Doesn't matter how much I spend on books. When a cover does not show, or I don't like it, I change it myself, how hard is that?

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by afv011

Doesn't matter how much I spend on books. When a cover does not show, or I don't like it, I change it myself, how hard is that?

Then why bother to buy it anyway?
If you're willing to touch it, you can do so with freely downloaded content.
Why spend 38 Euro then?

And it does matter, how much one spends. This obviously directly links to the number of books, apps, movies, ... one would have to check for possible flaws. Today, for example, I would have to check 17 Android apps, 5 iTunes TV episodes, 7 Kindle eBooks, 3 iOS apps and 11 PS Vita Games. Lots of these I won't touch for weeks. Until then, my backlog will have added up to hundreds of items. And I simply wouldn't want to end up on vacation with apps that aren't running, books that have formatting errors or TV episodes lacking the ending...

Years ago I've enjoyed, converting books, editing metadata and such.
Today, quite frankly, I simply would consider it a waste of time. That's why I hire specialists, that's why I buy from pros.

[afv011]

Originally Posted by mgmueller

Then why bother to buy it anyway?
If you're willing to touch it, you can do so with freely downloaded content.
Why spend 38 Euro then?

And it does matter, how much one spends. This obviously directly links to the number of books, apps, movies, ... one would have to check for possible flaws. Today, for example, I would have to check 17 Android apps, 5 iTunes TV episodes, 7 Kindle eBooks, 3 iOS apps and 11 PS Vita Games. Lots of these I won't touch for weeks. Until then, my backlog will have added up to hundreds of items. And I simply wouldn't want to end up on vacation with apps that aren't running, books that have formatting errors or TV episodes lacking the ending...

Years ago I've enjoyed, converting books, editing metadata and such.
Today, quite frankly, I simply would consider it a waste of time. That's why I hire specialists, that's why I buy from pros.

I understand being annoyed if a book has obvious OCR errors, is missing a chapter or part thereof, has inconsistent breaks here and there and such, but for a damaged cover image, I believe you've gone overboard - it does not detract from reading the book, and can easily be fixed. That said, everybody has different priorities in life; book covers are certainly not at the top of mine. Enjoy your book.

[PeterT]

@afv011: Remember... you can't fix the contents of a book in kepub format... and from the list of platforms that mgmueller many of those are kepub platforms.

[afv011]

Originally Posted by PeterT

@afv011: Remember... you can't fix the contents of a book in kepub format... and from the list of platforms that mgmueller many of those are kepub platforms.

In my book, that'd be a reason not to buy from them. If it can't be "cleaned-up", I ain't spending my money on it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by afv011

In my book, that'd be a reason not to buy from them. If it can't be "cleaned-up", I ain't spending my money on it.

If you download from the library and not direct via a Kobo reader or app, you do get box standard ePub.

[kennyc]

Yep, that's nasty and probably defective, but depends on software and how it is displayed on various readers I suppose. I've had any number of issues like that including some where the cover would not display at all on one ready but fine on another.

My belief is that the vendor should refund your the money and remove the book from your library.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yep, that's nasty and probably defective, but depends on software and how it is displayed on various readers I suppose. I've had any number of issues like that including some where the cover would not display at all on one ready but fine on another.

My belief is that the vendor should refund your the money and remove the book from your library.

In this case, it's not about the coding to display the cover. The graphic for the cover is defective.

[Cdesja5]

Originally Posted by PeterT

@afv011: Remember... you can't fix the contents of a book in kepub format... and from the list of platforms that mgmueller many of those are kepub platforms.

But you could download the epub to your computer and fix that, no?

Edit: sorry, duplicate of JSWolf's answer, I hadn't read that one yet...

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by kennyc

My belief is that the vendor should refund your the money and remove the book from your library.

The 2 Kobo customer care specialists, who joined the discussion, have fixed it in the meantime. It shows fine on Android now. I have to check on iPad and the other gadgets, but as it's fine on the website now, I'm pretty sure it's working for all platforms.
When writing this thread I knew, many (most?) wouldn't understand why I even bother. After all: Isn't it about the content?
I know myself, that I'm extreme here. But I'm mainly about collecting stuff. And things like that actually reduce the fun in my collection.
And I really don't want to spend endless hours by fixing flaws myself.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by Cdesja5

But you could download the epub to your computer and fix that, no?

Edit: sorry, duplicate of JSWolf's answer, I hadn't read that one yet...

It could be done and it would be a matter of only few minutes.
But I simply don't want to do something like that.

If you buy a paper book and find the hardcover torn: Would you fix it yourself with scotch tape (as you still could read the book, no harm to the content) or would you ask the bookstore for a new book without damages?
I know: Many customers won't care. Some will eat while reading and spill coffee on their book and don't mind at all. I do mind. "Collecting" is half the fun to me, the other half being reading of course ;-)
To some, books are tools of daily usage. To others they are valuable collector's items...
I'm the latter. From time to time I even use my old PDAs or Pocket PCs or MiniDisc Players for nostalgic reasons and still value those gadgets...