The bad Kobo customer service thread

[guitarizt]

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Just received my Aura HD (Los Angeles, CA). No wonder Kobo's customer service reps had no idea about order status. Packing slip on mine said it shipped directly from Ingram Micro which is an electronics wholesale/distributor. That said, pretty sure Ingram Micro provides Kobo with order info so Kobo should still develop a way for customers to easily track orders online.

Thanks, this is super interesting. That would explain the confusion. Hopefully they can improve on things so they go smoother in the future.

[John F]

I now have duplicate shelves on my device. As suggested by another member, I contacted customer support:

Response
Thank you for taking the time to chat with us, we are appending a copy of your chat transcript for any future reference.
Discussion Thread
Chat Transcript 05/08/2013 10:50 AM
Hi, my name is Luis R. How may I help you?
John: I'm having trouble with my Glo. It upgraded to 2.1.5, and I now have multiple shelves that I can't delete.
Luis R: We do really apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing.Let me please try to assist you with that!
Luis R: Is your device fully charged?
John: Yes.
Luis R: Thank you. Can you please tell me if you have tried any troubleshooting steps?
John: I believe this is a known problem. You need to do something with your server.
Luis R: Thank you. Let's try to perform the Basic reset on the device and then see if we can delete the bookshelves.
Luis R: I need you to please follow these steps: Basic reset: 1.Locate the small hole on the bottom of the device near the USB port. 2.Unfold a paperclip and slide an end into the hole.
Luis R: You tell me when you are done please.
John: OK. I'm back to the main screen.
John: What do you want me to do next?
Luis R: Good, now please go to library, shelves,and select the shelf that you would like to delete. Next to the shelf, there is like three lines icon tap on that and then tap delete.
John: Ok, I did that, and tapped on continue, and I still have duplicate shelves.
John: What do want me to do?
Luis R: Tap on continue?
Luis R: You have to go to your library, then tap shelves, then next to the tap the title of the shelf that you want to delete, then tap on the three lines icon and tap delete.
John: I did that. Twice. Once for each duplicate shelf. Can you please escalate this. And Have them respond promptly, like not 48 hours later.
Luis R: I need you to please perform a factory reset on your device to see if this deletes the duplicate shelves that you have.
John: Ok. I did a factory reset.
Luis R: Factory reset: 1.If possible, back up any books or documents that you added to your eReader using Adobe Digital Editions, or that you manually added using your computer. You do not need to back up any books you bought from the Kobo Store. 2.Go to the home page (if you are in a book, tap the bottom center and then tap the house). 3.Tap the Menu icon an the top of the screen (it looks like 3 lines). 4.Tap Settings. 5.Tap Device Information. 6.Tap Factory Reset. 7.Tap Reset Now.
John: Ok I did that. I still have duplicate shelves.
Luis R: Ok, I am going to escalate this issue to our Tier 2 Department and they are going to contact you within 24-48 business hours via e-mail.
Luis R: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
John: No.
'John' disconnected ('Concluded by End-user').

FWIW, I didn't do a Factory reset.
And you would think they would have me log out and back in again before doing a factory reset.

[taming]

Are you also using calibre to create shelves? If so, check to see if it is possible that one of the duplicate shelves is actually coming from there. There is a known issue, that Davidfor can speak to, about small differences between shelves created on the device (something about leading spaces, if I remember correctly).

FWIW, there was a beta some months back that created huge duplicate shelf problems for some people. A technician (after the issue actually went higher than Tier 2) had to manually do something to my sync stuff on the server and then I had to do a reinstall.

If this were a common issue now, I bet we'd be seeing a whole lot more complains, so maybe look at the calibre issue, if it seems possibly relevant.

[John F]

Taming, thank you for the suggestion. But I don't think it applies. I'm using the extended driver, all I have checked is "Read metadata from files on device", "use sub directories", "set series Information", and "Enable extended features". And I don't think I have had both plugins active when I connected.

If I check "Delete Empty Bookshelves", will it solve the duplicate shelve problem (the duplicate shelves are empty)?

Thanks.

[John F]

And while I'm complaining about bad customer service, just to nitpick, ...

From their support:

... Ok, I am going to escalate this issue to our Tier 2 Department and they are going to contact you within 24-48 business hours via e-mail. ...

So it really takes them a minimum of 24 hours to respond.

[llcj]

FWIW, I had problems with duplicate shelves after I updated to 2.4 (I think - it was the Dec./Jan. firmware release). I was able to get rid of them by doing a factory reset. Logging out and in on the device did nothing in regard to the duplicate shelves. I'm assuming that because I was able to get rid of the duplicate shelve with a factory reset that I acquired them in some way other than the server issue.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by John F

Taming, thank you for the suggestion. But I don't think it applies. I'm using the extended driver, all I have checked is "Read metadata from files on device", "use sub directories", "set series Information", and "Enable extended features". And I don't think I have had both plugins active when I connected.

If I check "Delete Empty Bookshelves", will it solve the duplicate shelve problem (the duplicate shelves are empty)?

No shelf management takes place if there are no shelf columns specified, so that won't change anything.

The mixed case and leading and trailing spaces should not be an issue here. They could make it look like there are duplicates, but it shouldn't prevent the shelves from being deleted. And you can see if there are leading or trailing spaces when you open the shelf. The dots underlining the name extend to one side or the other.

About the only thing I can think to do is to directly change the database. If you can open this, find the rows in the Shelf table and change the value of "_IsDeleted" to "true". That will remove the shelves from the list. And it should do the same with the server at the next sync.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by taming

If this were a common issue now, I bet we'd be seeing a whole lot more complains, so maybe look at the calibre issue, if it seems possibly relevant.

I have multiple shelves as well and don't use Calibre for shelf management.

It's only one shelf but I can't deleted it and can't change it.

That double shelf appeared on my Aura now, too, so it has something to do with the Kobo sync server.

[Sharkus]

One thing I do know for sure is that if the Name and InternalName of a shelf do not match then it can result in multiple shelves appearing. We found this when adding custom shelves to iOS, as we initially did not set InternalName, and I checked Touch and found I had duplicate shelves, and with additional syncs had duplicates of duplicates. once we specified InternalName, and of course deleted the dupes, we were ok.

If the shelf data is being synced then the thing to do would be to look at what the server has in regards to your shelf data. How do you do this? Best bet would be to PM me and we shall have a little chat and we might be able to fix things server side, which might fix things on the client when it syncs.

I'll be upfront and blunt. I *do* have tools I've written to add / remove / modify shelves (including adding / removing items on shelves), I wrote them when testing the iOS implementation of custom shelves. It's very useful to have something that can add, and remove 100 plus shelves, specifically outside of the app, to ensure the app can pull that information form the server.

I will *not* supply these tools to anyone, mainly as they may expose things we don't want to expose, for example, we may not wish end users to start running scripts to create 100's of shelves, just for a giggle. There is also the fact that even if I did give you the tools, they would not be of any use to you without other information, specific to an individual user (no, it's not your email / username and password), which may be difficult to obtain, and so rendering the script useless.

[PeterT]

Spoilsport !

** Removes Sharkus from the Christmas card list, and cancels the Fruitcake order

[John F]

And here is the tier2 email reply:

Thank you for contacting Tier 2 Kobo Customer Care. We apologize for the delay in our response. We have been receiving higher than normal ticket volumes and are trying to work through them as quickly as possible hence the delay in our response.
Unfortunately, the bookshelf problem is known. It is an account related issue. It only affected certain people that synced when our servers were experiencing a membase error.
To solve the problem, you need to create a new account, we will then add the books manually to your new account so that the error disappears. We apologize for the inconvenience.
One you have created your new account, please let us know what it is and we will add the books for you.
You will also have to sign out of the Kobo Desktop application and sign back in using the new account. You will also have to factory reset your eReader and then set it up using the new account.
We apologize for the inconvenience. We await your response.

Does the above sound right? From what's been posted, I thought they just needed to tweak something on their end?

And I really think that they just make stuff up:

... It only affected certain people that synced when our servers were experiencing a membase error. ...

I keep wifi off. I don't sync unless forced to because of version upgrades. The only reason I upgraded was that I now "have" three devices, and I want the same software on them. If I hadn't brought an Aura, I would have stayed back on 2.1.5.

And what the heck is a membase error. As a user I don't care. It is just them throwing out gobbly gook to confuse the customer. "yeah mention membase errors, that will make the customer think we know what we are talking about".

[Sharkus]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Spoilsport !

** Removes Sharkus from the Christmas card list, and cancels the Fruitcake order

I am NOT a fruitcake

Nice to know that I *was* on someone's Christmas card list

[Sharkus]

Originally Posted by John F

And here is the tier2 email reply:


Does the above sound right? From what's been posted, I thought they just needed to tweak something on their end?

And I really think that they just make stuff up:



I keep wifi off. I don't sync unless forced to because of version upgrades. The only reason I upgraded was that I now "have" three devices, and I want the same software on them. If I hadn't brought an Aura, I would have stayed back on 2.1.5.

And what the heck is a membase error. As a user I don't care. It is just them throwing out gobbly gook to confuse the customer. "yeah mention membase errors, that will make the customer think we know what we are talking about".

My guess is that a sync has happened at some point and caused the shelves to sync.
The membase thing, well, that makes me go "ahhhh!" as I do know what is being referred to, and also the problem mentioned. Obviously I do not and cannot share certain information, but I believe you could equate this to something like a web browser cache issue, whereby you might not see in the browser what you should see as the cache is having a problem.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by John F

And here is the tier2 email reply:


Does the above sound right? From what's been posted, I thought they just needed to tweak something on their end?

And I really think that they just make stuff up:



I keep wifi off. I don't sync unless forced to because of version upgrades. The only reason I upgraded was that I now "have" three devices, and I want the same software on them. If I hadn't brought an Aura, I would have stayed back on 2.1.5.

And what the heck is a membase error. As a user I don't care. It is just them throwing out gobbly gook to confuse the customer. "yeah mention membase errors, that will make the customer think we know what we are talking about".

Actually I know they can fix the issue without you're having to setup a new account. I know that tier 3 support has fixed people.

[John F]

Thank you Peter, I'll try that.