Learn from my pain so that you don’t have to repeat it.

As I mentioned before, the Barnes and Noble iPhone eReader software has an awkward bug.  This bug will not bite you if you stick to short books, but if you’re into anything longer than about 700 hardcopy pages, well, you’re kind of hosed.

Since I discovered this bug in early December, I have been diligently following up with Barnes and Noble to try to keep track of the status of the fix.  Having not heard from them for a couple of weeks, I finally sent in an email asking for the status.  They said.

Based on the situation you described, we feel that the difficulties you are experiencing would be resolved best by contacting us by phone.

We ask that you call us at 1-800-THE-BOOK (1-800-843-2665) and request Digital Support.  We are available Monday through Friday from 8AM to 11PM EST, Saturdays and Sundays 9AM to 11PM EST.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused and look forward to hearing from you.

Well hey, I’m game.  I gave them a jingle today.  After about five minutes on hold, I got one of their support people who was “happy to help!” me.  But before I could get any help, I had to give her an order number, my name, my email address, and my snail mail address.  A little invasive, but okay.  On telling her my problem, she exclaimed, “Oh, you need the digital support department!  Please hold on a minute!”  (“Digital support” was not one of the options available in their phone mail hell system, by the way; just “support”.)

So I held on.  And on.  And on.  And on and on and on and . . . you get the picture.  For–and I swear this is accurate–40 minutes I held on.  Having my ear assaulted by very, very bad Christmas Muzak.  (Isn’t Christmas over yet?)  Finally, as you might imagine, I decided that I had entered one of those voice mail hell infinite loops, and hung up.

I called again.  Again, about a 5 minute wait until I got “Heather”.  I asked Heather to please get me someone in digital support.  She said, “Oh, you need digital support?  Please hold on just a minute!”  I interrupted,

“Wait just a sec, please, Healther.  The last time I was transferred to digital support, I was on hold for over a half-hour and then gave up.  Can you get me straight to someone so I don’t have to wait?”

“Well, I can stay on the line with you while you’re holding.  The hold times are a bit long right now.”

“How long are they?”

“Oh, they’re running about 45 minutes to an hour.  Shall I transfer you?”

I hung up.  (I also sent email to the B&N people telling them what happened, and asking if there wasn’t some other path we can follow.)

So learn from me, young ones:  if you have B&N’s eReader software on your iPhone, or whatever other platform it runs on, and you need help, you’re doomed.  Maybe it will ease up in a few weeks, after the Christmas rush of newbies having trouble slows, but for right now it’s a nightmare.

Further bulletins on this topic as events warrant.