I purchased a Nook Color with great enthusiasm, and spent over $130.00 downloading apps and books my first night. I could not download even free books without providing a card number.
Features on the Website that are supposed to help contro charges to the account do not work. Worst, they do not care. As I complained about these issues, I was essentially told everything except that they took responsibility for them. I believe they have outsurced to someone who is not competently handling either the Website management or the Custopmer service management, but as long as I cannot get past customer service, the company will never hear my complaint.
The first problem I had was with the most expensive of the books I actually purchased. After couple of weeks I could not get it to open. Several weeks of e-mailing and eventually calling customer service did no good. It was not their fault I was told. They had to notify the publisher and tht would take a couple of weeks. When it still did not work, I posted a bad review of the book on the Website, expalining that the only reason I gave it a bad review (which I have since edited to reflect my actual positive opiniuon of the book itself) was because I could not read it.
I very much enjoyed my digital sunscriptions to some magazines, but reached a point when the small charges would have resulted in $35.00 overdraft charges on my account. When I went to the website to cancel the subscriptions the dialogue informed me that it would take an hour to process the requests. After two effrots to cancel, they still showed, and I still got charged. When I complained about this and another issue I will not even go into I wne t back and forth with customer service being told everything except that they would fix the problem, until finally they told me that to cancel the account I had to do what I had already done that did not work.
Just for good measure, I did it again. I replied to an e-mail requesting executive esscalation of my complaint in a reasonable time, and that was not done. I also made a separate reply with a screen print of the interface notice that it would take an hour for the subscription to cancel. That got a response that I should call customer service. That call just put me through a standard phone tree dialogue, with a customer service rep who kept trying again to get the credit card number I had since deleted from the system. After a half-hour on the phone she relented and cancelled my subscription for me. That appears to have gone through.
If this is what it takes to fix a problem it is not worth being a Barnes & Noble customer. My next e-Reader will be a Nook, because having the apps (some of which have also not worked properly) is not worth the hassle. Even though I pay B&N for the Apps and download them from the site, i have been told that they cannot help me with them, and that I cannot take advantage of some in-store specials, because i bough my Nook at Staples.
I have never felt so disregarded as a commercial consumer. Their answers were all algorithmic with no real concern or attention to any of my complaints, no responsiveness to what I actually said, and in some cases no indication that had read my complaints at all.
At this point all I want to do is hear from an appropriate B&N executive with authority over this issue — and since the store's own system stonewalls me, this is my only recourse. I hate to have to do this, but people need to know that the Barnes & Noble Website has account control features which dot work in a way that can cost them money, and the company does not seem to care.
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