Customer service in ebook land

Posted by reviewer | 8:26 p.m. | | 4 comments »

When it comes to customer service with ebook publishers what is considered a normal amount of wait time after emailing about a problem?
Recently I purchased an ebook from New concepts publishing. It was my first time buying from them, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
Before I bought my book I emailed customer a question about the check out. Within a few hours I received a simple reply.


When you click on the buy button below the picture of the book, you are
redirected to another page. Be sure to click add to cart.
As you can see there was no 'Hello Seneca', no 'Thank you for your interest', no, 'Have a nice day.' I would have been happier with a form letter. As least those are made to look like they care about customers.

Anyway, I had figured out the checkout before I got the reply back from CS. Still, as helpful-although not very friendly, that email was, I was impressed at how fast they replied.

So I download my book in LIT format, like I always do, lean back in bed with my laptop and start to read. Good book. I'm enjoying it. I'm reading reading reading then all of a sudden there are no more pages. WTF? The last pages cuts off in the middle of a conversation.

For a week, I emailed New Concepts publishing. Four times I emailed them. Four times! Not once did they write me back.

I ended up sending an email to the author and she was really nice. She gave me the rest of the story, and I was finally able to finish reading.

Whats up with them not writing me back? I gave them a week to reply before I got mad enough to contact the author.

I'm glad that the authors next book is going to be with Samhaim, and not New concepts, because I am never buying from NC again.

I did write a final email to the publisher telling them that they have terrible customer service and that they have lost me as a customer.

4 comments

  1. nath // 11:25 p.m.  

    Hmm, can't really tell how long it normal, but I think you gave them enough time to answer you! That was bad and it sucked. Luckily, the author was really nice! HOpe you're going to review the book soon!

    by the way, like the new look and colors... but you might want to change the font colors, because black is hard to read on dark green.

    hope you're having a good week-end :D

  2. Shelly // 12:44 a.m.  

    WOW! That is really poor customer service. I don't buy e-books normally, but I think a week is a wee bit ridiculous for a response. :o) How fantastic that the author helped you out!

  3. reviewer // 8:51 a.m.  

    Nath, dark green? the posts are on a white background...
    oh oh, does anyone else see a dark green background for the posts?

    I did review the book, it's the commander's salve :) I didn't want to mention this in the actual review, cause I didn't want anything negative mixed in there.

    Shelly, The author was really nice about it :)

  4. Mad // 6:38 p.m.  

    Never bought from NCP but last week I bought an ebook by Anne Stuart...was 6 of her vert HTF books...at the same time I bought that one, I bought 3 others from eharlequin and those 3 downloaded just fine. The Stuart book though, had a hard time downloading it and when I finally did download it to the computer, it came up fine...until I sent it to my palm...then all I got was 1200+ pages of blank pages. Emailed them and they never replied. Called the 800# and the lady I was supposed to talk to wasn't there. She ended up calling me the next day with no clue why it was coming up blank on the palm. She told me she'd research and get back to me. That was Monday. Haven't heard from her since then. I ended up deleting the book from my Palm and redownloading it and for some reason the second download/transfer to the palm worked just fine. Who knows why it didn't work the first time and if and when CS calls/emails me back, I can just say "problem solved on my own" LOL