01-17-2013, 10:17 AM | #46 | |
Bibliophagist
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Quote:
As someone who has worked in IT for more years than I care to remember, I've found that politeness and courtesy often work wonders in improving service. The squeaky wheel may get the grease but the sarcastic squeaky wheel gets moved to the bottom of the trouble ticket list. Regards, David Last edited by DNSB; 01-17-2013 at 10:18 AM. Reason: typos -- what else is old? |
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01-17-2013, 10:33 AM | #47 |
Grand Sorcerer
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I think it should also be understood that staff get caught between a rock and a hard place. On one side they have us, demanding, vocal, all wanting to see our own issues resolved. On the other side they have management and marketing, setting priorities for new features, new devices, all of which are needed to grow the corporate bottom line.
Last edited by PeterT; 01-17-2013 at 10:40 AM. |
01-17-2013, 10:44 AM | #48 | |
Seriously?
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Quote:
The only thing I've ever experienced is the multiple shelves, never any of the numerous problems some people seem to recount over and over again. Why is that? My best guess is because I buy my books (and not only from Kobo) and load them directly onto my reader without running them through Calibre (used to do this and realized it was unnecessary for me) or any of the other apps and programs other people use. I don't seek out firmware updates but wait until they are pushed to me. I don't make any other hacks or mods. If Kobo was the source of all these problems then we would all be experiencing them. |
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01-17-2013, 10:47 AM | #49 | |
Evangelist
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Quote:
Hypothetical example: Someone starts a thread about how to get a specific award on the iOS app. Someone else jumps in and comments that they should not expect any help from Kobo on this because of the problem they are having with version 1.2.3 of the firmware on their Glo, and then comment on how crap Kobo is. The other user then goes on to do the same thing in other threads not related to the problem they have. |
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01-17-2013, 11:18 AM | #50 | |
The Grand Mouse 高貴的老鼠
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"Deliberately provoking other members is prohibited. Members who post provocative or inflammatory posts will be warned. Persistent offenders may be banned." or any of the other posting guidelines to the moderating team. |
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01-17-2013, 12:32 PM | #51 | |
Bibliophagist
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The first bug I noticed with a Kobo ereader was having an ' in the file name triggering a DRM violation -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court from Gutenberg triggered that one. For the most part, I don't make much use of Calibre other than basic conversion to epub for books I own in other formats. After the conversion, I use Sigil to clean up the formatting and do basic error checking/validation with epubcheck to do a final check. For the most part, Calibre does a pretty decent job of the conversion. I've seen far worse epubs from companies that actually had me pay for the product including such lovelies as an epub that had the entire book in a single file, was missing the toc.ncx file and formatting codes that looked like a straight export in HTML from Microsoft word. Regards, David |
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01-17-2013, 01:24 PM | #52 | |
Wizard
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Quote:
There's a difference between:
I work in software fixing bugs and I expect and experience all three. And I don't exactly de-prioritize anyone's issue for sniping but on the other hand it doesn't help me solve the issue either. Once you've let me know the issue is important (see example 2 above) then anything else is just "noise" really. Let off steam if it makes you feel better (and subject to the board rules etc), and trust me I understand that buggy software can be very frustrating, but don't imagine it helps get things fixed quicker. |
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01-17-2013, 01:38 PM | #53 | |
Addict
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Quote:
OK I understand the dificulties and probably it's a dead duck but, maybe I'm being paranoid, I sometimes get the impression that some posts seem designed to steer a thread away from or damp down complaints against a problem with a Kobo ereader. Anyway since you as an employee have had your say maybe I as a customer can have mine. I also used to have a technical "customer facing" (as it was called ) job. Some customers were impossible, wanting technology to be 100% reliable, this is something you have to deal with. Luckily others were reasonable, its "swings and roundabouts". As a customer let me ask you this. If we keep having problems with our Kobo ereader what should we do: A. Report each one immediately to Kobo cust services. B: Discuss them on this Forum. C: Live with each one in the hope that Kobo will fix them sometime in the future. D: Check this Forum, find out which brand of ereader gives the least hassle and buy one of them. |
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01-17-2013, 01:52 PM | #54 | |
Wizard
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Quote:
Jack |
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01-17-2013, 09:44 PM | #55 | |
Evangelist
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I would also like to point out, that as mentioned above, I am NOT in customer care. I am on this forum because I want to be here, there is no job requirement for me to be here. I am not always on here, I pop by now and then. If I happen to reply to someone to help them out then it is because I personally wish to do so, again, no job requirement for me to do so. In other words, I don't have to be here, I don't have to reply to anything, it's a purely personal choice. Anyway, back to your questions: A = Yes, without a shadow of a doubt you should report an issue to us. If we don't know about it, we cannot fix it. If we do know about it we might already have a fix for it. B = Yes. I am not against reasoned discussion of issues people have. I think I have made it clear it's the sniping / thread hijacking that I don't like and that tends to be of the negative persuasion, hence the existence of this thread. But yes, discuss problems on here, again, it could be seen by someone who puts it in front of the right person to get it fixed. It's also a good indicator of how many people have the problem. It could be isolated to some very specific things, or very widespread. C = Yes, and No. You should have to live with issues in the hope they will be fixed. I'd like to think that A and / or B would aid in getting any issues fixed so that C isn't a long period of time. Another factor is that even if we are aware of a problem, getting it fixed could take some time. This could be because it takes a while to nail down the exact steps to reproduce the issue, or for the devs to find and fix it. You then have to see how severe the issue actually is, and wether it is something that needs a hotfix, or if it can wait to the next scheduled release. Speaking on iOS, we also have to factor in review times for the App Store, which are typically 10 - 14 days, so even if we fixed a problem today, which is unlikely, we still have to QA the changes and ensure they don't cause any other issues, and that could take a day or two, you won't see the updated app for 10 - 14 days (there could be exceptions if we say it's a critical fix, sometimes Apple will fast-track a release), there's nothing we can do about that delay, it's all in Apple's hands. Other platforms, for example Android, may not have the problem of dealing with the App Store approval process, so after QA sign off there is typically a shorter period before you see the updated app. D = Yes, but then I'm sure all readers have their unique quirks. It's all down to personal choice as to which reader you get. I will say that I'm not going to pressure anyone into getting a Kobo. |
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01-18-2013, 09:33 AM | #56 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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Have you tried the Avenir font? Have you tried Italics with the Avenir Font? Have you tried it with a sideloaded ePub? What version of firmware are you using? |
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01-18-2013, 03:37 PM | #57 | |
Bibliophagist
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Quote:
As a group, they would make lousy testers -- the envelope is never touched much less pushed. Regards, David |
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01-18-2013, 07:06 PM | #58 |
Zealot
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I wouldn't have even thought that the Avenir Italics thing counted as a bug. I would count that occasionally taping the right-hand side of my Mini would make the page
go back, but as someone who also works in tech support, it's not a very reproducable bug... Otherwise I think a lot of people on here are more the ones that fool around with their e-readers, changing fonts, adding in larger memory cards, or hacking it to have Google sync. (Alas my poor Vox...) Therefore we're more likely to encounter bugs, they might even be of our own making. |
01-22-2013, 01:45 AM | #59 |
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Buddy, I got a Kobo Touch for my wife for Christmas. 3 weeks later and I still haven't got it working - and I work with computers! I've lost count of the number of times I've reset it and the number of test books I've purchased from Kobo. I used to think the nadir of computing was Microsoft. They're geniuses compared with Kobo. As far as I'm concerned any complaints about Kobo are justified.
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01-22-2013, 02:32 AM | #60 |
Treachery of images ...
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@mynot it sounds like you need to return it to the shop now whilst it's still in the first month period.
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