If you buy a nook from Barnes & Noble and think there might be any possibility whatsoever that you could drop it, be sure to buy a protection plan for it. That’s because if the nook breaks and you didn’t buy an extended warranty, no one at Barnes and Noble can fix it. Not even if you offer to pay for the repairs.

My wife loves to read and pre-ordered the Nook in October of last year when Barnes & Noble first announced it. She finally received it sometime after the first of this year and despite the delay was genuinely excited about having one. She has purchased more books then ever before and uses it all of the time.

Yesterday she dropped it for the first time and the e-ink screen cracked. The device is now totally useless.

We’ve contacted Barnes & Noble through their 800-number and were told that there is nothing that can be done since we didn’t purchase the two-year protection plan when we bought the device.

I’m not asking for a hand out here. I know we didn’t purchase the insurance – we don’t on all consumer electronics we purchase. However, I don’t think that means we should now be stuck with a $270 (+ the cost of books purchased) paperweight.

What I need is a way to repair the device we already have. Ideally I would like to send it back to Barnes & Noble and have them fix it. Naturally we would pay any cost involved. Barnes & Noble refuses.

Third-party e-reader repair places do exist–we can’t make any specific recommendations, but an Internet search will turn some up. If readers have any suggestions, leave them in comments or e-mail them in, and we’ll pass them on. Otherwise, this sounds like a good candidate for some escalation–unless e-ink screens are that difficult to replace, suggesting that a customer willing to exchange money for a working appliance just go buy a new one seems short-sighted. Especially when that customer really likes buying e-books from Barnes & Noble.

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