One thing I often see on forums and reddit posts is people complaining about horrible experiences with customer support from different companies that sell ereaders.
It seems like all brands get called out for this somewhat regularly, and it’s not a good look for the ereader industry as a whole, but I think poor customer support is pretty much the standard these days for just about everything.
There was a time like ten years ago when Amazon took great pride in having the “best” customer support, but those days are long gone and it doesn’t seem like they really care very much anymore.
Amazon probably still ranks at the top when it comes to customer support for Kindles, but that’s not saying much when they’re competing against companies like Onyx that are based in China and could care less about US and European laws.
Of all the ereader companies, Onyx seems to get called out the most for having the worst customer service, but to Onyx’s credit they’re the only ereader company I know of that actually offers a repair service for their devices, and a lot of complaints seem to center around that. If your Boox’s screen breaks you can send it in to get fixed. It’ll cost a small fortune, but at least it’s an option. Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble—they’ve never offered any repair services for their reading devices.
I also see Kobo’s customer service getting called out for being terrible fairly often, especially when it comes to returns or warranty service. They give people the runaround and stop responding for weeks at a time, and customers are left not knowing what is going on.
Barnes and Noble has been known for having bad customer support in regards to Nooks ever since they started selling them. Most of their employees seem to resent Nooks, and if you go to a store and start asking questions about Nooks you’ll likely come to the conclusion that you know more about them than anyone at the store. If there’s a problem with your Nook, good luck getting help when nobody cares and nobody at B&N really knows anything about them.
A lot of the smaller ereader brands are based in China or Europe, and they don’t have any official support channels in the US at all so it can be hard to even find a way to get ahold of customer service if there’s a problem.
My personal opinion on the matter is I think customer service is pretty horrible across the board in all industries these days. It’s gotten to the point where I won’t contact customer support unless it’s absolute last resort. Most customer support agents simply don’t know what they’re talking about anymore, and they just talk in circles going off a script and treat you like an idiot while doing so. Sometimes they’ll just flat out make stuff up; Amazon’s support does that all the time when people ask questions about Kindles, and some of the stuff they come up with is hilariously wrong.
If you encounter a problem with your ereader, most customer service reps will tell you to perform a factory reset, and if that doesn’t fix the problem you’re on your own.
What is your experience with customer support when it comes to ereaders?
My 2012 Paperwhite kept randomly resetting while I was reading. I called customer service and it was more of a sales pitch then actual support. “What do you expect? The device is 4 years old. Buy our most recent model for [retail price.]” Not even a “did you reset your device?” question as is the norm for all tech issues. No discount for upgrading to the latest model either, even a refurb.
I can’t stand customer service for anything. Even if I’m in a retail store and an employee is giving me trouble, the manager doesn’t care. Nevermind that 5 years ago, the last time I worked in retail, the manager happily tore me a new one for even the slightest offense if the customer complained, always in public and in front of everyone.
As a retired IT professional I know what good customer support should be I did it for years. Now days there isn’t customer support, it is all some computer answering machine, asking canned questions that 99% of the time isn’t even relevant. I was told to be helpful, honest, and even hold the customers hand if needed. I was told to be overly concerned about my current customer and go beyond support as needed. That is all gone, I had dealing with a computer answering machine.
When I have a problem with my ereaders, I ask for help at MobileRead.com and usually get it. There are some very knowledgeable members there. I’ve long since given up on customer services in that regard. They’re useless.
I got incredible customer service from Bigme of all companies. I messed up some ADB comments and bricked my e-reader. They’re not very well known in the West so there was no available information on how to access the bootloader and any image files online.
I contacted the seller on Amazon and in a day their engineering team contacted me on Whatsapp, sent me the flash tool, the image, and then step by step went through how to flash the new image (which was good because tools weren’t in English).
It was very unofficial but they were very helpful, of course this was a software problem not a hardware problem so things may have been different if it was a return/refund process.
I recently purchased a refurbished Kobo Forma directly from Kobo. It couldn’t hold a charge from day one. By day 5 it wouldn’t turn on at all. They said it had a defective part. I did get a refund in short order. But I question how they could have sent such a defective device in the first place. Did nobody check if it was working properly before sending it to me? I’m not likely to buy any refurbished items from them in the future.
My local Mediamarkt is selling a refurbished Forma. It’s connected to power, just like all the other devices on their shelves, but it doesn’t turn on (I tried!). It’s been there for months. So it’s not just Kobo that doesn’t check their refurbished devices.
i am surprised to read that JoelN was able to contact a human at KOBO . I was never able to find a contact number that wasn’t a computer with canned responses . I eventually trashed my Kobo Clara HD and doubt I will ever buy another Kobo reader. Based on my experience with Kobo customer service.