Kobo has the worst customer support out of any any company actively developing e-reader hardware and selling digital books. Their call centre is based in India and they have no device experience and simply read from scripts. Many of the tier one support representatives have never handled a Kobo product. There are thousands of damning reviews about calling in for a simple task and are getting hanged up on or never contracted again.
In 2014 Kobo has developed a platform called Virtual Que. This allows people to fill out an online form, such as what device they have, where they purchased it from, nature of the problem and their Kobo account. They can talk to a live agent or instead of waiting on hold, or get a call back. The problem with this platform is that most of the representatives are the same ones from the call center and do not have any practical e-reader or e-book experience.
Over the course of 2017 thousands upon thousands of Kobo customers have taken to Twitter, Facebook and blogs to talk about their issues with Kobo customer service. Here is a modest selection of their issues and how they were resolved.
"I have been admiring the Kobo Aura One for the last couple of months and was thinking about getting one. I have a couple of hundred Kindle books at this point, though, so wasn't sure about making the change. I thought I'd try out the Kobo app to see how it compared, and once I downloaded the app, I started getting promotional deals each day. I decided to purchase 2 books and thought that each was covered by a different promotional deal. After my purchase was processed, however, it was clear that the deal that promised $5 would be automatically deducted from my first purchase had not actually been automatically deducted.
Do you have a Kobo customer service horror story? Drop a comment below and let me know.
i have only had to deal with Kobo customer service once in regards to an ebook order and their point system. The customer service representative was very helpful, said she would look into the problem and call me back and did call me back within 15 minutes with an answer and resolution. She was polite and seemed very willing to help. For every "bad" experience there are probably many good ones. But it is only the bad ones that get talked about. I have had some bad Amazon and Barnes and Noble customer service experiences and good ones. It always seems like Kobo is the one that gets targeted for these stories.
I think the big problem is that the average rep does not have the power to grant refunds on purchases and does not have any knowledge in the product. Take Amazon for example, in the US. They mainly hire people within the US who work from home, mothers with babies, students, or people who want to work a second job casually from home. They have a ton of power to take care of most customer concerns.
4) Kobo needs to look into this further.
On day 4, my book magically showed up with no further response from "Kobo Customer Care", which is what they called themselves at the time.
I still buy from Kobo because I've had similar frustrations dealing with Audible after Amazon bought them. However, I didn't even bother to contact support after a recent firmware update broke my Kobo. I just found workarounds.
I am dismayed to see the notice on the Kobo Help landing page, "Please be advised that due to higher than normal volume, it may take longer than 48 hours for your inquiry to be answered." How is that Help?
Sadly, I'm forced to agree. Random hangups while you're on hold (happened at least three times after being in que for a good 20 minutes); response emails that don't make sense; and ultimately, an inability to address the problems. My book would not successfully download on the Android app. The first agent I got ran through all the steps that made sense. Couldn't figure it out and escalated and said they'd get back to me in 48 hours. Fine. Then I get an e-mail saying I need to get back to them within 240 (yes, 240) hours or they'll presume the problem has been solved. Why? They said they needed to get back to ME. So I call them back and this guy's got no idea what's going on and can't explain the email. He runs through a few things that we've already done and says he'll escalate. In the end, they were not able to figure out the problem and offered me a refund, or if I want to keep the book a 5 credit toward my next book. Not horrible, but not a fix either. All that took about a week.
Maybe they are turning a leaf, I cannot say. My experience in the last two weeks was quite different. I used their 1-800 number, spoke with people who had a distinct North American accent, and who were definitely off-script with my issue. This was the polar opposite of my experience with PayPal support during the same period. I drove the poor guy crazy as I forced him to give me a straight answer, outside his list of rote answers he kept pasting in our chat (one of which he fed me 3 times).
I tried to price match as Amazon were selling a book I bought from Kobo at a much lower price. A few days later the Amazon price went back up and it was at that point Kobo did the match and not when I sent the price match form in. They refused to price match.
I would rather buy from Kobo because the book sync's to my Android phone at the point I stopped reading on the Kobo. But due to price I purchase more books from Google.
Maybe they moved it, but i had not heard anything.
Have you tried Amazon tech support, lately? Here's an example: I had an Amazon-sponsored phone — one where an Amazon ad appears on startup — & I wanted to pay them money to not have that anymore. Simple … right? Nope. One hour, thirty minutes; 3 tech support reps; not a clue what I was talking about. The last one even brought Motorola support online to guide me in hacking the phone to stop the ads (didn't work but loved the concept that Amazon was helping me to hack my phone to keep me from having to pay them). Finally I gave up and did an internet search. Found the solution in 2 minutes.
Add in horror stories from a malfunctioning Voyage — took them 3 weeks to "research" the problem. They called me back just AFTER the 1 year warranty. Would they honor it? Nope. Add in their (almost) comical, Keystone Cops attempts to fix a problem with Kindle for Windows Phone (didn't work) and their complete non-help with fixing ebooks "stuck" in indexing. Sprinkle in a frightful encounter where they claimed I didn't have an account with them … turns out, I use the first letter of my first name and I was giving them my full first name … last name was correct, email was correct, address was correct … I finally gave up THEN I realized what they had done.
I've had NO problems with either my Kobo H201 or my Aura One so I haven't tried Kobo support BUT it would be pretty damned difficult for Kobo to out inept Amazon.
TIP: IF you get a foreign Amazon tech support person outside the US, hang up and try again. It won't solve all the support problems, but it will help.
I'm based in the UK, have had terrible issues with Amazon, and their customer service appears to be based either in the Philippines or somewhere else in the Far East. I've had books wiped off my Kindle, reviews wiped off my books (never complain about that or they'll wipe the rest – I'm one of their long suffering authors) and I have no more trust in them as a company. They have no concept of how to help customers and authors and no interest in it, it seems. I suspect things are much better for readers/authors in the States in regards to Amazon, but it's dismal for the rest of us. I'm hoping I can get better service from Kobo and that some entrepreneur in UK can take up the helm some day.