Many people who’ve worked in the customer service field — where it’s not uncommon to be screamed at by irate callers — say it can be a dehumanizing experience, to the point where you sometimes feel like a robot. Then there are the non-humans who desperately want to be flesh-and-blood but can’t cross that uncanny valley. And finally there are those CSRs who might indeed be human, but aren’t doing a very good job of convincing the world of it. [More]
barnes & noble
Why Did Barnes & Noble Push Up My Membership Renewal Date By 2 Weeks?
By 11.19.13
William is a Barnes & Noble member, which entitles him to discounts in the physical store and free shipping on the Barnes & Noble website. He renews this membership every year, when it expires. That’s at the end of the year. Or so he thought. [More]
Barnes & Noble Founder Drops Bid To Buy Out The Struggling Bookstore Chain
By 8.20.13
Remember how Barnes & Noble founder, chairman and stake holder Leonard Riggio was going to swoop in on wings made of cash and buy back the struggling chain, saving it from the doom met by Borders? That shining hope has fizzled, it appaars, as Riggio has taken back his offer to swoop, buyout and generally act as savior in general. [More]
Barnes & Noble CEO Resigns Because You Didn’t Buy A Nook
By 7.9.13
In the bookstore arena, two American giants remain: Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Both companies sell dead-tree books and have created their own e-reader brands, and both companies see that e-reader as essential to their future survival. Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch resigned late yesterday, part of an expected shakeup after the world learned that the Nook division lost a whole bunch of money. [More]
Raiders Of The Lost Walmart Branch Out, Visit 7-Eleven And Barnes & Noble
By 6.5.13
The retail archaeologists known as the Raiders of the Lost Walmart tirelessly search the world’s retail outlets for the finest and longest-buried antiquities. What kind of ancient wonders did they turn up this week? Well, good news if you’re a time-traveling hockey scout. [More]
Microsoft Reportedly Considering Buying Out Barnes & Noble’s Nook Division For $1B
By 5.9.13
Usually when we hear one big company is interested in buying out another big company, there’s an element of “Hmm, didn’t see that one coming…” But in the case of Microsoft reportedly toying with the idea of paying $1 billion for Barnes & Noble’s Nook business, it’s more of “It’s about time those two crazy kids made formal commitment.” Microsoft already invested $300 million in Nook last year, and it seems prepared to go all the way. [More]
Hey Kids… This Mystery Shopper Report Tells You Which Stores Will Probably Sell You R-Rated Movies & Games
By 3.25.13
When I was an adolescent, my friends and I had to rely on word-of-mouth about which stores would look the other way when it came to movie ratings and parental advisory warnings on music. But kids today, they have the benefit of the Federal Trade Commission, which periodically looks at how strict various businesses are about sticking to these ratings systems. [More]
Nook Customers Can Download Rentals: You Just Need A Working SD Card
By 3.12.13
Last week we shared with you the story of reader Brian, who was ready to chuck his Nook tablet and trade it in for an iPad, if he hadn’t been long past the return window. He wanted to rent some movies and watch them while traveling abroad and without Internet access. This seemed reasonable, and Nook documentation explains how to do this, but his tablet wouldn’t let him. A possibly well-meaning and definitely misinformed customer service representative told him that downloading a rental wasn’t possible. They were wrong. [More]
Nook Website Says You Can Download The Movies You Rent To Watch Later? Too Bad
By 3.6.13 — Updated: 3.12.13
Scott was under the impression that he could rent movies for his Nook HD+, download them, and watch them on his device whenever he felt like it for the next thirty days. Where did he pick up such a wacky idea? I mean, other than Barnes & Noble’s own support site. And the downloading screen in the Nook store. Only none of it is true. Update: Barnes & Noble has contacted us, and they say that Scott’s experience isn’t what they intended, and Nook users really are supposed to be able to download movies. We’ll let you know when we find out what Scott’s problem was. Second update: The problem was with his MicroSD card. [More]
Barnes & Noble Founder Looking To Buy Retail Business Back
By 2.25.13
Just as Best Buy founder Richard Schulze nears the deadline to present his bid to buy the company back from shareholders comes news that the chairman of Barnes & Noble has similar plans for the company he started 40 years ago. [More]
Is Barnes & Noble’s Downsizing A Boon For Independent Booksellers?
By 2.7.13
With Barnes & Noble confirming that it continues to continue shutting down around 15 stores/year, it might seem to some like the day of the bricks-and-mortar bookseller is fading. But apparently, consumers aren’t just going online to buy their books — they’re also going to independent stores. [More]
Barnes & Noble Set To Close A Third Of Its Stores Over Next 10 Years
By 1.28.13
Despite the success of the company’s e-reader, the Nook, Barnes & Noble has been struggling to compete with the Internet with its brick-and-mortar stores for a while now, as have other retailers with physical locations. Another sign of perhaps eventual total doom? The CEO of B&N’s retail group says the company will be slowly shuttering about a third of its current physical stores over the next 10 years. [More]
Barnes & Noble Will Happily Price-Match Website…When You Return Something Without A Receipt
By 1.25.13
Marjorie has discovered a really irritating flaw in Barnes & Noble’s online price-matching procedures. As we discussed shortly after Christmas, you can place orders on the chain’s website for in-store pickup, but prices differ on many items between retail locations and the website. Unlike many other stores, orders placed online but picked up in person go for the in-store price, not the online one. This annoys a lot of customers, and may hurt the company’s real-life retail operations. Marjorie discovered an interesting flip side to this, though: she had to buy a gift in the store, even though the online purchase price was $22 lower. When she went back to the store to return it, after her son had lost the receipt, the only price they would give her was the lowest one they had charged for the same book online. [More]
How A Tip From Consumerist, A Credit Card, And Some Determination Got Me A Brand-New Nook
By 1.24.13
Kyle really liked his Nook…until it decided to freeze up and no longer work. He was unhappy: it was only two months out of warranty, and he didn’t like the only option that Barnes & Noble presented: trading the non-working device in for a relatively small discount on a brand-new replacement. He had purchased a lot of books he uses every day for work on the Nook platform, and decided to take a loss on those and get a Kindle instead. Unhappy with the whole experience, he vented to us about it. [More]
Is Barnes & Noble Hurting Its Stores By Not Price-Matching Its Own Website?
By 12.26.12
Barnes & Noble’s website allows customers to reserve a book for in-store pick-up rather than buy it online, but bn.com does its best to gloss over the fact that you could be charged more for the book at the store, leading to angry customers who use B&N as a showroom for its own website. [More]
HP’s Free Nook Promotion Could End Up Costing You $355
By 12.6.12
HP’s website has an offer going right now where you can score a free Nook Simple Touch (a $99 value) with the purchase of a new computer. But depending on which computer you buy, you could end up spending several times the cost of the e-reader. [More]
Here’s Why Digital Rights Management Is Stupid And Anti-Consumer
By 11.26.12
Comparisons of downloadable books and music to their ancient, tangible predecessors are an old, old meme, but sometimes the comparison applies. For example: if reader Synimatik had bought a paperback book a few months ago and picked it up to read now, the book’s pages wouldn’t magically glue shut just because the credit card she normally uses at the bookstore has expired. That’s how it works when you want to read a book downloaded from Barnes & Noble, though. [More]
Bookstore Combats E-Books With One Thing Your Kindle Can’t Offer
By 11.13.12
Whatever benefits an e-book might have over its print counterpart, and no matter how close digital media gets to ink-on-paper, there is one thing that downloaded copy of Moby Dick can’t offer to some readers: The collectable factor. [More]
