Pleasantly Surprised and Thoroughly Impressed

As you guys know from yesterday, my Kindle broke over the holiday. I was very concerned what was going to happen. Well, I am excited to tell you, I had the best customer service interaction I have ever experienced yesterday afternoon.

I will share the important part of the chat I had with Bhuvnesh, the Amazon Customer Service Rep, below, but I can easily summarize as well. I chatted with this gentleman for literally five minutes, before he reached the decision that Amazon would be replacing my Kindle, and shipping it next day air, on their dime.

Yes, you read that right. I would not have to send them the failed device, wait for them to refurbish it, and hope that a working one would arrive, 4 to 6 weeks later. They did not have to inspect my device to ensure it was not user error or negligence that damaged it. He did ask a few key questions, as you will see, but I easily could have been lying in my answers (I was not, but I could have been, he had no way to know).

Microsoft, whose X-Box 360 red ring of death scandal is one of the worst in consumer electronics history, I'm looking at you. This is how customers ought to be treated.

Now, before we get all blue flowers and unicorn farts on Amazon, let's keep in mind their business model. Amazon does not profit from selling Kindles. In fact, they're losing a good bit of money on the Kindle Fire, at least on the hardware, on purpose. That's because Amazon makes money off the content we buy to view on our Kindles. A lot of money. There's nothing wrong with that, but the point is, it makes sense for them to do everything they can to make sure I have a working device, so that I can purchase more content.

Yes, it costs them money to overnight the device to me, and yes, it costs them money to simply replace my failed Kindle sight unseen, but it's good business. It keeps me loyal, and it keeps me in a position to be able to buy more content from them, content which provides them with the highest possible profit margin.

Now, none of this is to say that a corporation as giant as Amazon should ever be considered completely benevolent, or that you should stop shopping at local indie bookstores, but it is evidence that they are getting one thing right. In fact, this whole thing went down so fast and so easily for me, it quite literally blew my mind.

Do any of you have any customer service nightmares or wondrous dreams to share?

Holiday Woes

I had a wonderful Christmas with my family, and there are many things I could tell you about, and celebrate, but instead I'm going to bitch about a couple things, because I can.

My Kindle died over the weekend. I've owned it for about 9 months. I'm really pissed. I'd grown quite attached to it, I must say, in those few short months.

I was in the middle of reading a really good book, too. Not one I can talk about, though. Thankfully I have the Kindle app on my iPad, so all was not lost, but reading on the iPad is a little bit like spraying lemon juice into your eyes, at least by comparison.

There is nothing quite as cool as e-ink. Except when that shit dies. I have no idea what went wrong with it. On Christmas Eve, it just froze. It would not respond to any buttons. I gave it a hard reset by holding the sleep slider button over to the right for over 20 seconds, and that rebooted the device, which then worked for about five minutes, and froze up again. I was able to reset it 3 or 4 times on Christmas Eve, but by the time we got home from Grandma's house, it was completely screwed. Now it will not respond to any buttons, and will only light up when connected to the charger, but will not be recognized by the PC, or complete charging (where the indicator turns from yellow to green). Amazon better have some kind of warranty in place, because I've had it for less than a year, and just got a second and third Kindle (different models) for my kids.

I'll be contacting them today.

The other thing I need to bitch about is the NFL. Well, mainly, Adrian Petersen. Every game I watched over the weekend sucked., but especially the Vikings. Not only did they win a pointless game, and therefore needlessly remove themselves from the running for the first draft pick, but they lost Adrian Petersen, possibly the best player in the sport, for this season, and most likely some of next season. It seems so utterly pointless.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have been playing. He's a competitor, and that's what they do, but for him to tear his ACL and MCL in such a needless game, and then for the Vikings to go on and somehow win that game ... it just puts a really crappy cap on a truly terrible season.

All right, that's it. I'm done complaining. I really did have a wonderful holiday, otherwise. How was your Christmas?

A Scary Good Book, by Anita Laydon Miller

I promise to get to more about my vacation soon, but today I have to announce that my friend Anita has released her second novel.

This one is a middle grade mystery titled A SCARY GOOD BOOK. Here is the official description:

Twelve-year-old Hannah Stone tells everyone she’s “okay,” but that’s a total lie. Two years ago her dad was killed by a hit-and-run driver. The detective in charge of the case never found the driver, but he somehow managed to get Hannah’s mom to fall in love with him. The jerk. And speaking of love, Hannah’s developed a major crush on Ollie Ortega—he’s her best friend and the only one she can talk to—a crush on Ollie is so not a good idea.

Also not a good idea? Searching for a missing person with no help from the police. But that’s exactly what Hannah does when she finds messages in library books—underlined words that point her in the direction of someone who needs her.

And, suddenly, Hannah’s even further from okay. She breaks into a library, gets caught in a kidnapper’s web, and is stalked by her dad’s killer, all in an effort to save a life…but can she save herself, too?

I haven't personally read it yet (it's just being released today), but I know Anita well enough to know that this is certainly a fun kids' ebook. And at $0.99 you absolutely cannot beat the price.

You can find the Kindle edition for sale on Amazon, here, but if you're not sure whether this might be for you, I suggest you at least visit both of Anita's great blogs, and get to know her a little better:

Anita Laydon Miller's blog.
Anita Laydon Miller's Middle Grade blog.

Thanks!

Kindle versus Nook

So my family went shopping yesterday, and picked me up an early father's day present. They bought me a Nook Color, Wi-Fi, 8GB. It's quite a gift. We don't usually do big ticket items like this in our family, especially not for something as minor as father's day, but both Kelly and Madison will be out of town on the actual day, so there may be some guilt involved.

It's truly a kingly gift. It's a pretty neat device.

But, that being said, I've got to spark a debate here on the old blog. I had actually been thinking of buying myself a Kindle recently. I want the el-cheapo, B&W, Wi-Fi only version. It's very reasonably priced now.

There are arguments for and against each device, and advantages to both, but let me tell you why I was leaning toward the Kindle before the Nook showed up in my house yesterday.

First things first, Amazon is a Seattle company (I'm from Seattle). I've had friends work there, and they all say it's a good company. I'm not necessarily for some of the very near monopolies they've developed lately, but it's still a company I do business with all the time, and I've never been unhappy with a transaction. But loyalty really isn't the issue here. Barnes and Noble is a decent company too, as far as I know. I don't know anyone who's worked there, but the employees seem happy enough for retail workers.

None of that really matters because it's all about the device. The Kindle is basically designed just for e-books. Even the high end worldwide 3G edition still just has the black and white e-ink technology for it's screen. That might sound like a drawback, but I would actually prefer reading an e-ink version of a book to reading on a back-lit LCD screen. I work in tech support and I stare at a back-lit LCD PC monitor ALL DAY LONG. I don't want to read books in a way that strains my eyes.

Another advantage that the Kindle seems to have is free e-book editions of books that are in the public domain. I like to try to read a classic or two each year. I have not fully researched this yet, but so far I have checked on A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, and Moby Dick, or the whale, by Herman Melville. Both books are available as free Kindle editions, but the Nook Books cost $0.99. That seems a little disingenuous to me. Who exactly is profiting off of these publicly owned works? There may be some kind of third party service that will convert free e-books into Nook Books, but why should I have to go through the extra effort when the Kindle editions are free and easy?

Yet another problem seems to be the availability of certain books. Just checking briefly last night I found several books that I am interested in that are available as Kindle editions, but so far are not available at all in the Nook Book store. Cassastar, by Alex J. Cavanaugh, is not available as a Nook Book. Twisted Velvet Chains, by Jessica Bell, is not available as a Nook Book. Ghost Medicine, by Andrew Smith ... actually that one is available, but for some reason you have to go onto the internet to find it, because it does not show up on the Nook when you shop directly from the device. In the Path of Falling Objects is available directly on the device. I imagine this has a lot to do with self-publishing, and the way that Amazon's system supports independent authors, but I would rather have the device that has the most access to the most books.

So, at this point you're probably thinking I hate the Nook my family bought me. I don't. It's actually pretty cool. The one nice thing that the Nook has that the Kindle doesn't is the internet, apps, and extras like the music player, and the ability to store any kind of file. Actually, I'll have to research that, I think the Kindle can store some documents. But the internet on the Nook is pretty nice. The screen is large enough that if you turn the device sideways you can use almost any website with relative ease. I tested Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, and Le Blog. Updating anything that requires entering text is a little clunky, because often the fields show up very small, and the websites are not displaying in a special mobile format like they do on most smart phones.

All in all the extras of the Nook make it pretty attractive for the price, but there's one drawback. At the price point the Nook Color is selling at right now, it is basically trying to market itself into a position between the Kindle and the Apple iPad. The problem is that the Nook doesn't do everything the Kindle does, and the things it does do that Kindle can't, are things that are clearly outperformed by the iPad. Obviously you can't compare them directly, because of the difference in price, but my personal opinion is that if I want a full color device that reads e-books and does internet, I would prefer the larger screen, smoother interface, and reliability track record of Apple. Besides, you can get a used iPad original edition for about the same price as a Nook Color.

What do you guys think? Do you own a Nook? Do you own a Kindle? Do you own an iPad? Anyone ever switched from one to the other, or owned more than one of these devices?

I need to make a decision about whether I am going to return the Nook in favor of a Kindle, but I want to make sure I get all the information, and advice from friends, that I can, first. As I said, I haven't researched it all fully, and I was curious what all of you thought too.