Kobo Discounts: Coupon Codes + Discussion

[pdurrant]

I've updated the first post to make the information about price matching clearer and more prominent. It means I can get Amazon offer prices at Kobo!

[Liber]

On the first page you've written "... plus 10% of the Kobo price." It should be "... plus 10% of the competitor's price."

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Liber

On the first page you've written "... plus 10% of the Kobo price." It should be "... plus 10% of the competitor's price."

Thanks. Now corrected.

[pdurrant]

I've found it's worth checking the refund from a price match. I would have expected them to have an automatic calculation, given the purchase price and the competitor's price, but it seems someone does it manually. Just reply to the email if they make an error.

[pdurrant]

There's a 30% off code MARCH30 on a limited selection of books.


Offer ends 17th March.

[bustacap]

bought a book for $5.66 ($6.99 before the vip discount), requested a price match refund cause it was $0.99 on the publishers website. got refunded $5.40 so i effectively only paid $0.26.

no idea what the math is there :P guess it removed the 99c from the non-vip price of 6.99 to get 6.00 and then 10% off that to get to 5.40. so at least for me it was an additional 10% off the kobo price, not the competitors price

[pdurrant]

Let me check what's happened for me in the price matches I've done:

Book 1: VIP Price: £ 5.21, Match Price: £0.99, Refund: £. 4.32, Price: £0.89
Book 2: VIP Price: £ 9.98, Match Price: £4.39, Refund: £. 6.03, Price: £3.95
Book 3: VIP Price: £11.49, Match Price: £0.99, Refund: £10.60, Price: £0.89
Book 4: VIP Price: £ 7.01, Match Price: £3.94, Refund: £ 4.24, Price: £2.67*
Book 5: VIP Price: £ 7.01, Match Price: £3.94, Refund: £ 4.24, Price: £2.67**
Book 6: VIP Price: £. 5.21, Match Price: £0.99, refund: £. 4.90, Price: £0.31***

The first three seem to have the right refund.
The fourth & fifth I foolishly ordered two books in one transaction.
Initially, I was given a refund of £3.37 for one book, which would have given a final price of £3.64, which doesn't seem quite right to me. But I only queried it to get the price match for the second book. They increased the refund on the first, and gave the same refund on the second.
The sixth one I queried the refund which was initially £4.22 giving a final price of £0.99. I thought I should have got a refund of £4.32, which would have given a final price of £0.89. But when I queried it, they increased the refund to
£4.90

All I can conclude is that you should expect a refund of the difference +10% of the competitor's price. And if you don't get that, query it.

But I have no idea how they work out the refund when you query a refund!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There's a 30% off code MARCH30 on a limited selection of books.


Offer ends 17th March.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see the MARCH30 code automatically applied to a sale book I put in my cart the other night and as far as I can tell it's not on the lists of qualifying books (an obscure travel book that's not in the typical categories). So it might be worth experimenting.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by issybird

I was very pleasantly surprised to see the MARCH30 code automatically applied to a sale book I put in my cart the other night and as far as I can tell it's not on the lists of qualifying books (an obscure travel book that's not in the typical categories). So it might be worth experimenting.

That's good. I had to refund and repurchase a few times because i forgot to add coupon.

[pdurrant]

A reminder: Don't use coupons on books you're going to submit a price-match for!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Let me check what's happened for me in the price matches I've done:

Book 1: VIP Price: £ 5.21, Match Price: £0.99, Refund: £. 4.32, Price: £0.99

For the first one, I didn't work out what it should have been. I think it should have been a refund of £4.42, giving a final price of £0.89.

The difference would be £5,21-£0.99 = £4.22 + 10% of £0.99 = £0.10 so £4.32 is correct and the final price would be £0.89.

The one time I queried a refund, the most likely issue was the person who handled the refund entered the Kobo price as $14.59 as the price instead of $15.49 and Kobo corrected the issue within an hour of my query. The refund showed as $5.60 instead $6.50.

[birdplan]

Kobo may be tightening its policy. Today I purchased an e-book from Kobo at $21.99 having already priced it at Amazon at $9.88. I claimed the difference but Kobo denied my claim.

"Unfortunately, the Price Match credit does not apply to your purchase due to the following reason(s).

​- The book on the competitor's site was less expensive due to a promotion or other offer"

Nothing on the Amazon website had indicated that the Amazon price had been a "promotion or other offer," except that any sales price extended to the public is an "offer" in some sense.

I immediately asked Kobo for a full refund to my credit card, and this apparently has been granted (we'll see).

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Forgive me for not reviewing the entire thread, but it does run 1,165 pages or so.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The difference would be £5,21-£0.99 = £4.22 + 10% of £0.99 = £0.10 so £4.32 is correct and the final price would be £0.89.

Quite right! Thanks for pointing it out. Now edited with correct info.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by birdplan

Kobo may be tightening its policy. Today I purchased an e-book from Kobo at $21.99 having already priced it at Amazon at $9.88. I claimed the difference but Kobo denied my claim.

"Unfortunately, the Price Match credit does not apply to your purchase due to the following reason(s).

​- The book on the competitor's site was less expensive due to a promotion or other offer"

If they do that to me, I shall also be returning the book. So far it hasn't happened, even though several were obviously on offer.

The plain words of the price match guarantee don't say anything about offers.

"All books at Kobo are backed with our Price Match Guarantee. If you find the same eBook or audiobook on another website for a lower price, we'll credit you the difference plus and extra 10%.*"

"* 10% of the competitor's price, within 7 days of purchases."

There are Terms and Conditions, but the only exclusions on competitor's offers are the price must not be lower due to:

"advertising error; misprint; combination promotion (e.g., gift with purchase); after-sale rebate offer; or preferred-customer, or other similar discount."

None of which sounds like they apply in your case.

Do you ask them to reconsider their decision? Or did you just go straight to a return?

[birdplan]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Do you ask them to reconsider their decision? Or did you just go straight to a return?

I went straight to a return. I was angry: I'd never had a problem with getting a Kobo price-match credit before. And I didn't even want the new e-book that much; I'd finished another e-book on one of my devices about 24 hours ago and felt the itch that I ought to fill the hole back up with at least something.

I might decide to repeat the process in a couple of months with the same book and see what happens. Thinking it over, I half-expect that with a different reviewer I'll get a different result.