John Agno, who blogs at So Baby Boomer, was one of the 900,000 people who bought a new e-reader during November and December of 2009. Agno’s selection was Amazon.com’s Kindle.
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When he received an e-books gift card from Barnes and Noble as a Christmas gift, a problem occurred.
When Agno called Barnes and Noble’s customer service to ask how he could buy e-books from them for the Kindle, he was told, “You can’t.”
In addition, Barnes and Noble said Agno couldn’t get cash for his gift card, unless it was required in his state.
This is a problem for book-loving consumers. You buy an e-reader, but you can’t use it for the e-books of different companies. Consumers are caught in the middle as new technologies are developed.
Once again, it confirms that corporations think more about their profits than what works well for consumers.
