I have one word for you my friend: chargeback. Call your credit card issuer and state that you a retail outlet made a sale, made some promises on that sale, and charged you $278.
This is the easiest action you can do to deal the most damage. Anyone who processes payments knows that chargeback hurt a lot. Chargebacks are a consumer protection, so they are easy to do.
If a company makes a promise to give you X, Y, & Z at a certain price, they have to follow through. You have a few options, but chargebacks can be the simplest way to get there.
To add to this, threatening to chargeback can be an excellent way to get decent customer service out of some places. Most customer service associates are trained to go way out of their way to avoid it.
You can also avoid the call center by looking up your favorite source of executive information, finding the name and address of someone like a VP of Customer Relations or what have you, and writing them a polite, businesslike letter on dead tree explaining what happened and what they need to do to make it right for you. This will get read by their secretary, who will call the switchboard, ask to be transferred to the person in charge, and say "The Boss wants this handled now." And that is about all it takes. (Well, apparently the VP in this case was not great, either, but you could have shaved two months off the resolution time by contacting her earlier.)
I've had to do this to a bank or two which was under the mistaken impression that I owed them money. Incidentally: a tact I particularly like, since I own shares of essentially any publicly traded stock by dint of owning broad index funds, is to send the letter to Investor Relations. Just say you're a shareholder (you are certainly not the most convoluted situation that results in getting invited to their shareholder meeting) and that you've had a problem, blah blah blah, please fix at your earliest convenience.
Today is January 22nd. Tiffany called me back about an hour ago and told me that Melanie Doty, Barnes & Noble's Vice President of Customer Care had instructed her to tell me that, despite repeated assurances to the contrary, Barnes & Noble wasn't going to be able to honor their promise to me because their computers showed that my order had been cancelled.
Agreed. I had a problem with an eBook I purchased from B&N being unusable on my nook. After many attempts to explain why I should get a refund to the dense customer service, I finally threatened a chargeback via email, and was promptly refunded my money.
And for what it's worth, having used both a Kindle and a nook, I really want to like the nook more, but I just can't. The poor user interface and the bad taste from B&N customer support make me not want to use the thing.
Granted, I think we're probably getting half the story -- my experience with customers that type subject lines like "Help! multiple nook delays and broken promises" is that they are not always the most pain-free to deal with. (The easiest customers to support are the ones who treat it like it is all business. Incidentally, taking this tact has helped me with a megacorp or six over the years.)
However, the fact that something even remotely close to that story could happen shows broken CS policies. At my previous employer where I was a CS drone, I could have resolved the issue on any call: "Oh, we promised you a $100 gift card? I'm terribly sorry you haven't received it, sir. Can I make it up to you by issuing a $100 refund to your credit card, which will show on your bank statement within one to three business days?" Or at ANY point in the circus they could have said "I'm sending you a new Nook. It will ship from our warehouse within the hour and be hand delivered by FedEx tomorrow morning. When the first one arrives in a few days, do us a favor and just tell the delivery guy to take it back. Don't worry about the cost: we'll cover all the charges. We're serious about making you happy."
Obviously you don't want $8 an hour CS drones making that decision too often, but you can always just trust-but-verify their judgments. (I got flagged by the computer twice for being overly generous. My manager came over to talk to me about it. I said "A customer was unhappy. I resolved the situation." and got a pat on my shoulder. This was in a business with margins so thin you could shave with them, too, rather than high-end electronics which lock people into your purchasing system for life. Crikey, you think they'd fall over themselves trying to get that in his hands.)
This was entirely a rant about customer service and delivery issues. I got my nook a week before they promised delivery and I've been perfectly happy with it ever since. I even called customer service once while waiting for it and they answered all my questions.
The Nook itself is still a little rough around the edges - it just feels like it was a rushed job to get it to market, which it probably was. The good news is that most of the problems I've experienced with it seem to be software related. Biggest annoyances are not being able to go to a page (?) and the sluggishness of the LCD touchscreen. It's crashed a couple times formatting a book the first time in.
OTOH, the paging speed is good, the PDF support is adequate, and I've spent a fair amount of time reading on it without issue.
The Kindle is no better. Flash, flash, flash, flash, ok we've finally loaded your next page. I would have hoped that an electronic book reader could turn pages faster than I can by hand.
What I still don't get is after stories like this and my own experiences dealing with customer service is why they don't just put one person at the call center who actually has the power to do something. If there was someone there that could make an autonomous decision without needing to ask the computer for permission and physically put a Nook and a $100 gift card on a truck to your house, then we wouldn't have these problems. But no one can. I get the impression that all the people you dealt with were being completely honest. They sympathized but literally couldn't do anything about it, at least not without getting fired. Customer service people who can't do anything are as good as no customer service people at all. I don't understand companies not trusting and giving real power to their customer service agents.
Maybe. But I am sure that if records show that a product is delayed, then the customer service rep should have a bit of leeway to make the customer happy.
This has nothing to do with the nook itself but rather the process about acquiring one through the holidays. I expected an article about the actual hardware itself.
This is true, but if their customer service for acquiring the device is anything like their customer service if something goes wrong and they already have your money, this is a bad sign. Not only that, but he's spent so much time (~2months) dealing with this that it has jaded him entirely on the entire thing. What was supposed to be a good experience (who doesn't like a new gadget?) was ruined by B&N customer service. True, this was their first big foray into consumer electronics... but that's no excuse for bad service. Even if they had said in December "it's on backorder, and we have no idea when it will ship", that would have been 100X better for this guy.
If you promise something, you must follow through. This is something that most companies just don't get: details matter. How you're treated on the phone matters. The ordering process matters. The pre-purchase information (web page) matters. Hell, even the box and shipping process matters.
And this is all before you even get to use the device. Imagine if you've gone through all of that. How could you possibly write a non-biased review? You can't, because all of the stuff leading up to the device showing up at your door completely ruined the experience.
I agree 100%. I was pissed that I got to the end of the article and it was just a customer service rant for a nook he never, ever received. No comment on the device itself.
These situations happen from time to time. I understand his outrage, but front page?
I own a nook myself now. And, used to have kindle.
From my experience, kindle is a lot better than nook with just two reasons:
1. Amazon offers more books(especially programming books) than B&N.
2. Amazon offers cheaper books and it doesn't require you to join the Amazon book club. You have to join the B&N Book Club to get cheaper price which is always the same price that you get from Amazon.
>We recently received an email from you. However, the email did not
include a text message. Kindly re-send your inquiry with a text message
so that we may respond to your request.
I'm going to remember that one. It was pretty good.
That reminds me an anecdote when I moved to Paris. I wanted to get DSL, the standard over there with quite many operators to choose from. I choosed Free, because they are cheap (30€ for ~18 Mbps at the time if I remember correctly, TV and phone), and the most innovative player. They also have a reputation of extremely bad customer service...
Since I didn't have a phone line (yet), and the previous tenant didn't have a phone line either, the process seemed to be a tad more complicated than usual (for them). Anyway I ended up on the phone with one of their sale rep (obviously not French, my guess would be someone based in Marocco), who told me that it was going to take roughly 4 to 6 weeks to setup the phone line, and then everything would be fine. That's a very long time... but what do you want, they are cheap, and it's France, never expect anything to come fast.
2 months later nothing, not an email, not a phone call, nothing at all. Considering their completely useless customer service abroad, I decided to just forget about them (without canceling anything) and called one of their competitor (Orange, formerly known as France Telecom) : the most expensive, but 1 week later I had phone, TV and 8 Mbps internet for 44€ euros a month. 14€ more than Free, 10 Mbps slower, but at last I could stop "borrowing" my neighbor connection.
I never heard about Free again until one year and a half later, when I received an email roughly stating that "there had been an issue and consequently I won't get DSL from them". I will never know what went wrong, but I'm amazed that they reacted after such a long time.
I mean, one year and a half... I wonder. After such a long time they should have guessed that I don't care anymore ? What were they thinking ? It was way too late not to look completely ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense to me.
It's sad hearing stories of companies being complete idiots towards customers like in this case. I can't believe that this still happening in this day and age.
This should be a case study for recruiting. Sounds like Barnes & Noble's hiring practices need a serious overhaul. Find some passionate people and they could turn around their business in no time.
I'm not so sure this was a hiring problem. It sounds like everyone he came into contact with treated him well, while he was in contact with them. The individuals who promised to get back were probably in chaos, and/or told to say exactly that and then take the next call. And the next. But they were probably doing their job very well, within the system they found themselves in.
It sounds to me like a large part of fulfillment was outsourced (not so unusual) and there was very little involvement from BN during the "channel design" (don't know what you call that, I'm not in the biz) and channel operation. Basically, some vendor was allowed by BN to screw BN and its customers.
The VP who denied the $100 gift card was probably staunching a hemorrhage of gift cards.
None of this is an excuse. But it sounds like BN actually hired well, at the point of customer contact.
I see your point, it probably has more to do with culture than hiring. The employees (at all levels) do appear to have done what was required of them with a friendly tone.
Where I think this becomes a hiring problem is that I would expect that somewhere along the way that Barnes & Noble would have hired somebody who would actually do what they were hired to do - Customer Service. In my opinion, this issue was never resolved and therefore every representative who worked on this case did NOT actually do their job.
No representative (regardless of the process) should promise a call back if they don't actually intend to follow through. If Barnes & Noble had hired correctly, the system wouldn't have failed this miserably.
I bought a BeBook, which is a rebranded Hanlin. Why? Because it's an open platform: I run OpenInkpot on it, and I even could write my own software for it if I wanted to. It doesn't have wifi, but I don't miss it; I copy ebooks and texts on it using the USB cable. It displays flat plain text files fast and well. As for readability on portable electronic devices, nothing can beat an e-Ink display in the bright sun ;-)
I can't vouch for the service, but there's ebooks.com .
Personally, I prefer formats more flexible than PDFs, like plain text files.
DRM issues. Pricing issues. Platform issues. And, apparently, customer service issues. The ebook has a little more maturing to do, so for contemporary books I'd still stick with physical copies.
Actually, it is not trivial to programmatically extract plain text from a PDF in a consistent format. In many cases it is easy, but the PDF format is visual first and content second, resulting in plenty of opportunities for Captcha-like problems.
Despite that, PDF, especially PDF-A, is the superior format for preserving published content.
Huh, I didn't realize that PDF hasn't been propriety format since 2008. That's awesome.
Reading plain text files is simpler to do across platforms. If an app on a mobile device just pays attention to the text then that's fine for functionality, I guess. But then I have a problem with the extra formatting being there, unused. Kind of like having a problem with unused CSS in a style sheet just sitting there.
Can't help but thinking the Amazon affiliate link to the Kindle is tacky and lame. It's hidden by a URL redirector, and only disclosed at the end (the second time it's used).
I also can't help but thinking that this is not a friendly warning to others, but simply one more attempt to finally get something out of B&N by causing a public fuss.
Principally, you care because you might have been manipulated into reading an article with a catchy name just so the author can make some sales.
If it weren't someone that we all know, then that might be an issue. But Jesse has been around the hacker and entrepreneurial community for a long time, and has a reputation to uphold. If you've been to OSCON, YAPC, etc. you've probably seen him speak and possibly met him. He's not some random dude trying to cash in on this new-fangled Internet thing.
Certainly. In a previous life (10 years ago) I've been a user (and a hacker) of RT. So I know the guy, which is why I said this is most likely genuine.
Because in the grand scheme of things people getting commissions will ultimately increase the price of things for me. It's also up to me to decide whether or not he deserves commission. Perhaps I already wanted to buy a Kindle beforehand.
There's a big difference between writing that: (A) Calls a company out on poor product or customer service, and writing that: (B) Diverts or directs audience to a specific competitor. The "specific competitor" part is what makes this article reek of something suspicious.
[edit] I mean human-generated writing, of course. . .
no offense to you staunch, but I've gotta be honest, I'm starting to get really annoyed about people bitching every time someone puts an affiliate link up.
Who cares?? It's clearly marked, nothing deceptive about it at all. Complaining about affiliate links is becoming a cliché, like complaining about dupes.
I just think there's a right way and wrong way to do it. 1) Do disclose it at the time you use the link 2) Don't obscure the URL with a URL redirector. 3) Don't contrive reasons to put put affiliate ads into your content.
Why do you care whether he gets a commission on the sale of a Kindle? If you want to buy a Kindle, and he influenced you in your choice, shouldn't he get credit for that. Seems to me that everything seems okay, unless you're suggesting that he made up the story in order to get people to buy Kindles, which seems unlikely to me.
I'm not saying I'm right to find it tacky/lame, but nothing requires that he made up the story to sell Kindles. It could be simply that he decided this article might get a lot of attention, and decided to try to capitalize on it.
So, that's my blog post. The "Buy a Kindle!" links were very much a last-minute addition. My thought process was really more one of "It'd be nice to steer more cash away from this vendor who pissed me off." The "Oh. There is delicious irony in getting the $100 I was 'owed' by referring people away from B&N" thought came embarrassingly late.
My intent in ranting about B&N's poor customer service was to shame them into fixing it or losing customers.
By a strict interpretation of your words, yes, I totally realized that my blog post might get attention and decided to capitalize on it. I don't expect a whole lot, though. The number of Kindles people bought via links from my blog post puts the hourly rate for the time I spent on Savory and the other opensourcy Kindle hacking I did last year at about....what I'd earn working the drive-through line at Wendy's.
This is largely off-topic, but thank you for the work you've done. Hacking the Kindle is by no means glamorous or easy, and it's good to see someone doing it. Keep up the good work.
Long story short, early adoption invites a lot of problems.
Not to discount the OP's valid issues, but shipping and customer service problems have been evident with most every new hardware release that I can remember.
edit: plus at the end of 2009 i noticed that while the local B&N has a big Nook sales kiosk right when you walk in, staffed by a salesperson, when you go to buy a book the big Nook banners behind the sales desk have small 'sold out' banners taped across. obviously a bad sign.
I can understand why my comment has been downvoted, but to clarify and save face a little bit. . . .
I would feel insulted if, after corresponding with a company with that much effort, the result was a big fat nothing.
To me, the 100 dollars would be trivial. I have an interest in keeping a good relationship with everybody, even companies. It doesn't feel good for a situation to have an outcome like this.
This is the easiest action you can do to deal the most damage. Anyone who processes payments knows that chargeback hurt a lot. Chargebacks are a consumer protection, so they are easy to do.
If a company makes a promise to give you X, Y, & Z at a certain price, they have to follow through. You have a few options, but chargebacks can be the simplest way to get there.