you get nothing!
The ebook "war" is a race to the bottom, apparently, with Barnes & Noble trying to out-do Amazon on
DRM stupidity. A reader emailed B&N customer service to point out that their "free books" offer consists of 5 public domain titles that are no longer protected under copyright, yet are still locked down with digital rights management (DRM). Their response? "For copyright protection purposes, these files are encrypted and cannot be converted or printed."
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marketing
Gosh, this is really thoughtful of the
Barnes & Noble bookstore on the
Georgia Tech campus. They sent Steve an email reminder that at some point in the past, he explicitly opted out of receiving any email communications from them in the future. See, he may have forgotten that he didn't want to be contacted, and how else would he remember it if B&N didn't contact him to let him know?
Update: Shane at Mississippi State University received the same helpful reminder from
his campus bookstore, also run by B&N.
billing errors
It's bad enough when a glitch on a retailer's side screws up your method of payment, but Barnes & Noble took so long to investigate and respond to one customer's emails that by the time they acknowledged they'd made a mistake, they said it was too late to do anything about it. Now the customer is left with an unused $25 gift card and a $50 charge on his credit card, twice what he'd approved at check-out.
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Consumerist
Barnes & Noble's new iPhone app comes with a virtual coupon—there's a one-time-only code you show the in-store barista to receive a free cup of coffee. [MocoNews.net]
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