E-Book Pricing Alerts
- Thread starter JD
- Start date
Well looks like Kobo isn’t putting this months books on sale at all if they haven’t done so by now. I did buy Agents of Influence and The Unsettling Stars at least. But no sale books.
I keep getting emails from Simon and Schuster about 'amazing Star Trek deals'. These are indeed amazing deals... when in my mailbox. When I click the Amazon.com link I'm directed to the .co.uk website (I'm from Poland) which features no such deals. Could anyone confirm that this is how S&S deals are supposed to work? (I.e., that they are available to US customers only?)
The monthly eBook sales are for U.S. readers only.
Has anyone tried contacting Kobo about this? It seems like a simple oversight, since the previous monthly sales have consistently shown up there.
Thank you for the information!
(I'm reading 'Desperate Hours' at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it. Thank you for writing it! :-))
I actually did, at the beginning of the week, but I couldn't find an email address and had to use the chat feature, so I don't really know how much the first-level customer service people can actually do about it.
They asked me to send them the titles, which they apparently checked, and the markdowns were pending and would be available "soon", they just didn't know the exact date it would happen. Again, I don't really have any way to verify if this was actually true, or if this is something they just say to placate the customer. I didn't originally post anything about it, because I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up if it ended up not being true.
The next day, they reverted the site to their usual layout, and reinstated their daily ebook deal, so I figured it was just a matter of time now, but so far, nothing.
I was originally going to try following up with them next week if nothing had changed, but maybe if other customers wanted to contact them about it too, it might help to show that the demand is there? I did mention to them that Amazon already has the sale prices up, but at the time, they had suspended price matching due to the pandemic.
I see they're on sale at amazon canada but not kobo. Definitely an error on their part.
I just tried the same thing and got a completely different answer--my chat-feature contact said they "can't do a price match on this" and that the discount was only available in the US, even when I pointed out Amazon Canada has the titles marked down. This person didn't even try to claim any price reductions were pending.
Well just threaten to buy them on Amazon instead and maybe they change their mind! And show them this link too. https://www.simonandschuster.com/c/ebookpromoJune2020
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I started with the link, which lists all the titles but actually hurts one's argument--every promo specifically includes a disclaimer at the top saying it's only available in the United States (despite our knowing the contrary), so Random Kobo Employee who's never encountered this before thinks of the answer as right there.
I ended with asking who I could contact to say I knew a number of people who'd be buying these on Amazon Canada instead, and I was invited to use a different feedback button on Kobo's homepage...which wasn't on said page when I went to check.
These are DRM free, right? So it wouldn't matter if I bought on amazon. I can just download and convert?
That's what I was afraid of...
Of course not!
By "with their own products", do you mean they will give you a refund if their own price drops after you purchased? No, I don't think so, at least I've never seen anything about that. Their "price match guarantee" only refers to competitors products. It was suspended due to the pandemic, but I can't find that message anymore, so I guess it's available again? Unfortunately, I don't think it will work here, because it says the products have to have the same ISBN, and the ePUB versions and the Kindle versions appear to have different ISBNs? So it would have to be price matched against another Canadian store that sells ePUBs, and I'm not sure there is any such beast?
And even it it *did* work with Amazon, you have to purchase from Kobo first, and they only give you store credit for the "refund", so you'd still be paying the full amount on your credit card. And since you have to purchase first, if they disallow the match, you're stuck with full price, and without any store credit either. And if they do allow the match, they won't "refund" the difference in the taxes, either.
If it gets near the end of the month, and Kobo still hasn't got their act together, I'll just buy them from Amazon. I don't have a Kindle, but I could still read them on the Kindle PC app. It's annoying not to be able to use my Kobo eInk reader, though. But I'm only buying these *because* they are on sale, so if Kobo won't mark them down, I'm not buying from them.
They are available in the UK as well though they haven't always been the same as the US deals. They were this month though, I got the Picard novel for 99p.
Do they have a Kindle reading app for Kobo? They have one for Google, which I use all the time.That's what I was afraid of...
Of course not!
By "with their own products", do you mean they will give you a refund if their own price drops after you purchased? No, I don't think so, at least I've never seen anything about that. Their "price match guarantee" only refers to competitors products. It was suspended due to the pandemic, but I can't find that message anymore, so I guess it's available again? Unfortunately, I don't think it will work here, because it says the products have to have the same ISBN, and the ePUB versions and the Kindle versions appear to have different ISBNs? So it would have to be price matched against another Canadian store that sells ePUBs, and I'm not sure there is any such beast?
And even it it *did* work with Amazon, you have to purchase from Kobo first, and they only give you store credit for the "refund", so you'd still be paying the full amount on your credit card. And since you have to purchase first, if they disallow the match, you're stuck with full price, and without any store credit either. And if they do allow the match, they won't "refund" the difference in the taxes, either.
If it gets near the end of the month, and Kobo still hasn't got their act together, I'll just buy them from Amazon. I don't have a Kindle, but I could still read them on the Kindle PC app. It's annoying not to be able to use my Kobo eInk reader, though. But I'm only buying these *because* they are on sale, so if Kobo won't mark them down, I'm not buying from them.