Bye bye Pocketbook

[K-Thom]

Me, I'm just Jiminy Cricket whispering into Pinocchio's ears. ^^

[joepie]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Me, I'm just Jiminy Cricket whispering into Pinocchio's ears. ^^

Well that was an animation movie ... this is real life.
If you push someone away like that, he is probably not coming back anytime soon...

Don't blame the cricket. Several of you have used rather rude language to express yourselves. Shame on you.

[OphReader]

Originally Posted by joepie

If you push someone away like that, he is probably not coming back anytime soon...

Oh come on, we're not in kindergarten any more. There was and is definitely a reason to criticize PB, if he cannot take that (he himself was never a target AFAIK) he is not the right man to deal with customers anyway.

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by joepie

Well that was an animation movie ... this is real life.
If you push someone away like that, he is probably not coming back anytime soon...

Don't blame the cricket. Several of you have used rather rude language to express yourselves. Shame on you.

Joepie,

mtravellerh is well loved on this board and a lot of people miss him and hope he will show up again soon. It is however a user board. The mix up of doing business, customer service and private talk was unfortunate. It was only a matter of time for this bomb to explode. There are quite some people who think here is not the place to do ones customer service at. And this is right IMHO. It was fun for everybody as long as the posts concerned the enhancement of PB's software and everyone was working on it. It started to be no fun as people complaint here over matters that would have been better adressed with CS at PB's website oder HQs.

K-Thom, mtravellerh and some others have been on this forums for a couple of years and know each other very well. They are on first name basis. Being a newbie like you I should not mix into their quarrels and maybe you shouldn't also.

I am sure they will sort it out and mtravellerh will be back as "himself" the private board member.

[Metal Mick]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

<snip> It started to be no fun as people complaint here over matters that would have been better adressed with CS at PB's website oder HQs.

<snip>

Hi Poppaea, et al,

I'll accept my role in this, and yes, customer service would be the logical place for some of my gripes.

However, neither of my emails to them were answered, and my experience contacting the seller for my PB was less than satisfactory. For goodness sake! Why would anyone alter an order without contacting the customer first? And then expect the customer to pay extra to get the order right?

I don't believe there is any customer service. I am not alone, and there are other threads on this board that tend to support that belief.

There is nobody at PB who has any credibility with me, let alone affection. I hope this thread remains high and visible as a warning to others.

[joepie]

Poppaea,

You speak words of the wise, and I stand corrected as such.

My reply was to raise objections to the harshness that has been building up in this topic for some time now. K-Tom wasn't even close to being the rudest at all. I'm not completely sure I'd even call his wording rude. He did seem, however, to have made the final remark that pushed mtravellerh over the proverbial edge. After that, it appeared to me that he wouldn't take personal responsibility for his words. Therefore I reacted. Your explanation does give another twist to the story, however, and I will accept it.

I'm not trying to get between long-time members or mingle into the discussion any further. Again, I was just objecting to rudeness that was so appearent in this topic. As a child, I was taught not to be rude. Eventhough I understand that some people here are frustrated and extremely displeased, there should be no reason to insult people or companies on such a scale IMO.

Insult to a person CAN be hurtful as well as to a company. I take pride in the company I work for, and would be insulted if similar remarks would be made to its address. Being a sales representative or not, insult is never part of an adult discussion.

These remarks told me that the edge was near:

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

<snip> please calm down.
Please give our helping hands a chance to get a grip on things before slaughtering them verbally.

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

I do not like to be called greedy and dishonest!

I understand my words will not mend or change anything, and I hope your insights will prove true. I was merely taking a stance for morality that seemed to be left rather lacking.



Joepie

[J.C.]

Just to state the obvious a bit, this is the official forum for pocketbook users (at least according to the USA website).
The pocketbook people have chosen not to setup their own board but attach it to this big and lively community.
In my opinion that should translate to a much more evident presence/activity of official support staff.

The company have been around long enough to get a grip on things and present a more professional face, starting with amping up its support system (especially the global one, i.e. the forums of whatever language) and tidying and updating its websites getting rid of the 'half translated/never updated' look that is so evident to those of us who can't read Russian.

Myself I just bought the PB602 and perhaps I've been spoiled by my Palm TX.
Comparing the specs of both units the 602 is far better equipped, yes even the 301 seem better on specs alone (CPU,RAM,ROM).

The catch being that there isn't enough being invested in developing the potential of the pocketbook hardware and even the SDK for the new models is late in coming.
There is much that can be done to improve the looks and functionality of the pocketbook even without expanding it, the effort just need to be made.

[Guus]

02-05-2011:
Originally Posted by mtravellerh
First: you 302 owners are not forgotten and you may be up for a few positive surprises soon.
.............
What is 'soon', now 4 weeks ago?

[Seneca]

Originally Posted by Guus

02-05-2011:
Originally Posted by mtravellerh
First: you 302 owners are not forgotten and you may be up for a few positive surprises soon.
.............
What is 'soon', now 4 weeks ago?

Well, in commercial, at best semi-professional software development we have seen in the past from PB, I would attach a "months" unit to every time relate comment. so 'soon' probably means 'within the 4-5 months'.


Regarding 'The Company' and its missing support devision and marketing/public relation representatives:

I might be wrong, but as far as I understood, there is no such thing as a global pocketbook company.

There are just some resellers, enthusiastic people who loved the early pocketbook devices (and the quality of hardware/software and responsiveness of the original pocketbook inventors) strong enough to negotiate with the early pocketbook 'company' to setup local, independent stores, using the pocketbook brand with permission.

And of course there is the 'real' pocketbook international, a Kiev based (?) small company, hold by the original inventors, of unknown but small size. May be five to ten people all in all? I don't know.

What is known is, that all those here in the forum and 'behind' the various stores are as dependent on the Kiev company as we end users are, when it comes to software updates or promised and never released SDKs and all the other troubles we see. As far as I understood, these resellers don't have any influence on the main company, and don't have any privileged information. They basically update their websites, when they spot an update on the Russian site -- provided they have someone who can read the Russian stuff ...

It is this unfortunate setup, a small and hopelessly overloaded company, which does all the technical development for an insane diversity of similar e-reader devices, on one side and independent resellers that trade under the pocketbook brand on the other side, which created the massive problems we seen now. There is simply no strong company that could possibly keep up with the market growth and customer demands pocketbook has seen over the past 1.5 years. They collapse under their own success.

All that said, I don't have any special connection to pocketbook or any magical source of information. The above is simply my summarized understanding from various comments spread-out in the English and German forums.

[guyanonymous]

What would you call "Pretty much ready" then in PB time?

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89216

So far we're at over 8 months and counting...

[Seneca]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

What would you call "Pretty much ready" then in PB time?

Probably 1-2 months in ordinary peoples time, so ...

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89216

So far we're at over 8 months and counting...

... looks like they lied

[cipri]

yes, that's very funny, if mtravellerh says one year ago: it's pretty much ready.

they lie so much, it's incredible

[rfog]

Originally Posted by cipri

yes, that's very funny, if mtravellerh says one year ago: it's pretty much ready.

they lie so much, it's incredible

And when we remember them their lies|promises, they feel offended and go away.

[troll05]

I don't think Mtravellerh, Forkosigan and the other guys are lying intentionally, it's more they get wrong informations which they relay to their customers.
I guess they are the ones who are told lies firsthand, so calling them liars is a bit extreme, naive would be a better word

[rfog]

Originally Posted by troll05

I don't think Mtravellerh, Forkosigan and the other guys are lying intentionally, it's more they get wrong informations which they relay to their customers.
I guess they are the ones who are told lies firsthand, so calling them liars is a bit extreme, naive would be a better word

Then why they do not apologize and explain their problems? I think this is a community and we are customers and if sellers apear here they must be at least polite and respect the idiosyncrasies of these forums, which is helping between us and be supportive. AFAIK the only things they've done is promise and promise and never fulfill those promises.