Elipsa Ghost eBook Purchase on an Elipsa

[Cootey]

My Kobo Elipsa arrived today, and I’ve been having fun exploring it. Taking notes on almost any e-book is effortless and cool. Both notebook formats are excellent and work flawlessly for me.

So I decided to test the kobo store and purchased a new book. The book never arrived. I checked my account on kobo.com and sure enough, there was the purchase. And visiting the book’s page on kobo.com showed that I already owned the book. However, the book still didn’t show up on the Elipsa. It also didn’t show up on my iPad and iPhone running Kobo’s app. Nor did it show up on my Kobo Clara HD. I’ve even repaired my account a few times. No luck. I’ve purchased ebooks on the Kobo store for years, and never run into this problem. Visiting the store again on my Elipsa and trying to repurchase the book gives me a “We are sorry but this item is not available in your region” message, which is incorrect since they already charged me for it.

I mentioned this in another thread, but thought it should have its own just in case somebody else was running into the same problem. I’m running the very latest firmware (4.28.17826) Anybody else running into this glitch? I haven’t reached out to kobo yet just in case somebody online already had a solution, but I’ll probably reach out to them soon.




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[Cootey]

I’m going to assume this was a fluke since nobody else has responded. This was a very troublesome bug to fix. After repairing my accounts multiple times with no results, I turned to Kobo’s online support. However, Kobo’s horrible online chat system made it more complicated when chats were abruptly reset and I had to begin from scratch three times.

A) The first tech demanded that I repair my ereaders and apps accounts again even though I already had. He wouldn’t address the region error. He then demanded that I log out of all my apps and ereaders, destroying all my reader stats and awards. Which didn’t fix the problem. My advice is if your tech is unreasonable, unsympathetic, and treats an obvious server error as user error, hang up or disconnect the chat. It’s what happened to me anyway when the website burped. I wish I had not listened to him.

B) The second and third techs were much more helpful. Unfortunately, we’d get one step closer than the last tech, then the chat would be reset, even as I typed. I’m sure both of them would have eventually helped me. They were searching for solutions server-side, not client side. However, after the third disconnect I gave up on the online help and called Kobo. The first guy was a Saint. He tweaked something on his end, and the book appeared in my Kobo Desktop collection, but nowhere else. Then he asked me if anybody had deleted the book from my account, then restored it yet. This was it. Repairing all accounts after the tech deleted and restored the book fixed the missing ebook glitch.

I don’t know if this is a random glitch or something unique to the Elipsa. Something obvious went wrong when I made my purchase. I haven’t tried to purchase any more ebooks yet with my Elipsa.

The last three techs made up for the first one. Don’t listen to a tech who doesn’t listen to you. I’m posting this just in case someone else runs into this problem.

[Cootey]

This is more than a one time glitch. I have purchased two books using the Elipsa, and neither downloaded. That seems to be a database issue on Kobo's end. The Elipsa is not purchasing properly. One book I fixed (as stated above) by having a tech remove it from my account, then restore it. Once I repaired my account, the book appeared. The other book only appears in my purchase history, but not in My Books, even on Kobo's website, just like what happened with the first book. I'll have to contact Kobo again. I tried purchasing a third book the next day with the Elipsa, and purchasing failed altogether. I had to buy it on Kobo's website instead, where it went through without a hitch, and the book synced to the Elipsa without issue. Overdrive books also sync without issue to the Elipsa. The problem lies in purchasing through the Kobo store on the Elipsa.




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[PeterT]

Any chance you have the wrong date / time / timezone on the Elipsa?

[issybird]

Moderator Notice
Three posts, two above and one in the other Elipsa thread, have needed to be edited to resize images. There’s a limit of 600X600 pixels per image and these far outstripped it. Please read the guidelines.

That said, Tapatalk appears to be the issue and it might be best just to assume your image will be too big and to thumbnail them as a standard practice.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by issybird

Three posts, two above and one in the other Elipsa thread, have needed to be edited to resize images. There’s a limit of 600X600 pixels per image and these far outstripped it. Please read the guidelines.

That said, Tapatalk appears to be the issue and it might be best just to assume your image will be too big and to thumbnail them as a standard practice.

Yes, I’ve been using Tapatalk’s medium size setting. In fact, I’ve been using that setting for a few years, so I hate to think how much work I’ve made for you. I’ll use its small setting in the future. Thanks for letting me know.


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[Cootey]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Any chance you have the wrong date / time / timezone on the Elipsa?

Good suggestion, but no, I’ve got it set for correct date, time, and timezone. (And here’s a test for Tapatalk’s small size setting.)



Any other ideas? I’m hoping for a quick fix instead of another run through Kobo’s tech support gauntlet.


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[Cootey]

I’ve got an update to this problem.

I spoke with a Kobo agent today that was extremely helpful. She didn’t assume I had no idea which end of the eReader was up or down. She looked at the previous chats, and she verified for herself that the book in question was purchased, but not in my library. So she deleted and restored the book, then I repaired my Elipsa and voilà. Hello, book. At least I thought. Now it showed up in my library on my Elipsa, but I couldn’t download it. The Elipsa said I had run out of room. The Elipsa was full with 26GB of space remaining. 🙄 Here are some screenshots:




Books borrowed from the library also stopped syncing to the device. The tech was leaning towards replacing my device and was escalating the matter with her team, so I had nothing to lose and enabled the Dev mode, then factory reset to the original firmware.

Now I am up and running again, and library books and purchases all download correctly, but my notebooks are gone. A little known fact is that when you do a factory reset, your notebooks disappear.

At any rate, the purchasing issue seems to have been fixed, but then I thought that was the case on Friday night when the books started to disappear the next day. I will watch and see how my Elipsa functions over the next few days and report back here.

If this was a matter of a corrupt firmware install, then this isn’t an Elipsa issue at all, though this was quite the odd bug i’ve only ever encountered on an Elipsa. And for the record, I had not installed nickel menu or any other third-party apps.

[Skydog]

Wow, that is indeed puzzling! I haven't experienced any of your issues (yet) as I intentionally removed the few items that synced, from both Kobo and Overdrive until I had tested the basics, but I'm curious now. Did your Elipsa contain more than one Kobo or Overdrive book at the time? (no way to know from the photo). The full ereader message is certainly disconcerting.

My kepub conversion problem was solved with an uninstall/reinstall of the KoboTouchExtended driver. Dropbox is set up and I've synced all my articles with Pocket, which are a treat to read on the big display. Photographs render beautifully. BTW, in case you did not see my updated BT post, caution if experimenting. I went to bed with the battery at around 90% and it was down to 28% the next morning. As there is no visual on/off indication, it's impossible to know if it is actually off. Hopefully, BT usage was the culprit.

Kudos to a helpful CS rep. I'll keep an eye on your thread and hope your factory reset cleared the gremlins.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Skydog

BTW, in case you did not see my updated BT post, caution if experimenting. I went to bed with the battery at around 90% and it was down to 28% the next morning. As there is no visual on/off indication, it's impossible to know if it is actually off. Hopefully, BT usage was the culprit.

Kudos to a helpful CS rep. I'll keep an eye on your thread and hope your factory reset cleared the gremlins.

Thanks for the update. I’m glad you got your issues sorted out.

Unfortunately, things are still bizarre over here. I’ve noticed the following problems (and relayed them to the tech.)

1. When side loading books for the first time, the home screen opened after processing the books, but something was wrong. My books were missing. The layout was as if I had no books. A search of collections showed most collections had no books anymore; the books I side-loaded weren’t in My Books>Books>Recent; and all my downloaded books had been removed.

Side-loading the same books onto my Clara caused no problems, with all the new books showing up at the top of My Books>Books>Recent.

Once I repaired my account, the side-loaded books reappeared, but they were sprinkled throughout the books in Recent instead of clumped up top—they were alphabetized with the other books that had recently downloaded. However, the collection counts were repaired, and the books that belonged in the collections were restored. I still had to download them again, however.

2. Every time I side-loaded books, I experienced the same results: the books were missing, and I needed to repair my account. It’s ridiculous to repair the account after each side-loading session.

3. The book I purchased on my Elipsa while the tech was on the phone with me would not allow me to set it as “unread”. I needed to update its status using my Clara, then sync the Elipsa. Why is this happening? 😖

4. Sometime between when I talked to the tech and when I was trying to fix the side-loading disappearing book issues, I noticed *thirty-four* of my purchased books were mysteriously removed from my Elipsa and marked as archived. What on earth? When I synced, they disappeared off my Clara as well. After all, they were removed and archived! I certainly didnt do that. I was reading some of them! LOL Do you realize how much time it takes to individually restore thirty-four books on Kobo’s site? I wonder what is going wrong to cause so many bizarre glitches.

I’ve requested a new unit. We’ll see how it goes.


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[Skydog]

This is right out of the Twilight Zone. Have there been any more strange occurrences with your Claras and your account? I can certainly empathize with your frustration and am sorry you are having to deal with an exchange. Looking forward to a positive update!

[hobnail]

This is rather extreme advice but you could do a hard reset on your ereader, turn off your home's wifi (so it doesn't try to sync with kobo's server), or see what it lets you do when you select the option that you don't have wifi when you first turn it on. Then turn off the wifi in the kobo. And leave it off forever. There have been multiple threads here where people have had problems with syncing with the kobo servers and needing to reset their account. I keep my Kobo's wifi off and buy all of my books from amazon, manually download them to my pc, and side load them from calibre.

My elipsa arrived today and I sideloaded all 700+ books from my calibre library to it without any hiccups. (Although I did the sideloading in batches of 100.)

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by hobnail

I keep my Kobo's wifi off and buy all of my books from amazon, manually download them to my pc, and side load them from calibre.

I forgot that this only works if you have a kindle since you have to tell their download page for which kindle you're downloading it.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Skydog

This is right out of the Twilight Zone. Have there been any more strange occurrences with your Claras and your account? I can certainly empathize with your frustration and am sorry you are having to deal with an exchange. Looking forward to a positive update!

While waiting for an update from Kobo, I have experimented a bit. I am still experiencing disappearing books, both sideloaded and purchased, but what I can recreate every time is the following.

When connecting my Elipsa to my Mac, upon ejection the Elipsa will reimport all sideloaded books whether I actually sideloaded books in the Finder or just did a sync with the Kobo desktop. Once importing is finished, only sideloaded books remain, not listed in order of import order, but alphabetized instead. All purchased books have been removed from my Elipsa. Then, when I repair my account in Settings, the book thumbnails are returned, but I have to download them all again. This happens EACH time I connect my Kobo to the desktop app.

To answer the other suggestion, WiFi doesn't factor into this side-loading issue. The moment I eject the unit from my Mac, all side-loaded books are re-imported, alphabetically, and all previous purchases are removed. However, if I followed your suggestion, I could avoid the latest update. I might experiment with that to see if it's an issue with the update or my Elipsa.




Here's a before and after shot after I eject the Elipsa from the computer. I get these results whether I side-load or just briefly mount the Elipsa on the desktop. Notice the difference in time stamps was only four minutes between ejecting and repairing.

Considering that I cannot purchase with this unit without corrupting my online account, I cannot side-load without a forced reimport of side-loaded books and a deletion of all purchased books, and that one or two books disappear every day, there is clearly something wrong with my unit, especially since a nuclear factory reset to original firmware hasn't fixed the problem.


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[Cootey]

Turning off WiFi doesn't work. Upon factory reset, the Elipsa gives you two choices: WiFi or Desktop app sync. You cannot proceed from that page without making a choice. The desktop forces a firmware upgrade. I didn't try shutting off my WiFi network to see what will happen yet, but I can tell you that the Elipsa needs an internet connection to download the handwriting recognition resources. Without those resources, one cannot create or edit notebooks.

The new install seems more stable. I've been sideloading books and purchasing (free) books without issue. Overdrive and Pocket work. But I've been here before. Within 24 hours the glitches begin. This is my fourth factory reset. Here's hoping I fixed things this time.


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