Kobo

Device great, Kobo sucks – My Kobo ia great.. their app and customer service is absolutely rubbish. Full of bugs everywhere. I can't even buy books without jumping through so many hoops because their "one tap buy" doesn't work.

Uses Manipulative "Dark Patterns" – Created a kobo account via Booktopia. They took my credit card details but failed to send confirmation emails. I ended up with multiple accounts by accident, and spent hours trying to log in to remove them, I guess I didn't find them all and still got charged a monthly subscriptions for accounts I didn't use. It felt extremely manipulative. … Read more

Very easy to sign up, very hard to end subscription. See 'Obstruction Techniques' here https://www.gtlaw.com.au/insights/regulators-shine-light-dark-patterns

Kobo plus is trash – Very poor service with little to no books on the subscription. I purchased kobo plus to read their entire catalog, however, you only get maybe 5% of all reads. Not worth it. Show details

Absolute rubbish, as is there help service – I have two of these pieces of rubbish, a mini and some other piece of rubbish, nothing but trouble with both. The mini will not sync, will not connect to WiFi and will not connect to my PC. The other piece of rubbish connects to WiFi and syncs but will not connect with my PC. I tried resetting, but it won't connect, so next I tried resetting… Read more

via computer, but the kobo site will not recognise my username or my password, so, I applied for a password reset, nope, received nothing. Contacted their help service, they sent a link to my email address to reset my password. I reset my password, then tried signing in, nope the kobo site will not accept my email address they sent the link to, nor will it accept my new password. Buy a Kindle, Kobo are absolute rubbish as is their help service.

DONT EVEN TRY – I started a one month subscription trial and cancelled it straight away. One month later I got an email from kobo saying payment had failed but they would keep trying. I got on line to make sure my subscription had been deactivated the month previously and when trying to log on I got a msg saying subscription had been deactivated. I… Read more

eventually found on line chat and spoke to a lady who was unable to solve the issue and she asked if I had contacted the right business and I was disconnected.

I then got on the phone and the call centre operator said he could see my subscription had previously been deactivated and couldn't offer any further advice.

Not a company you want to give your bank details to.

Over time they are ok – I find myself going back rewriting reviews due to companies changing over time. So KOBO.. they are on par with Amazon, their E-readers are roughly the same quality as amazon and the cloud services are great, allowing the newer e-readers to Auto Sync so you never lose your page no matter what device you read on. One of the conundrums I face is… Read more

comparative scoring of companies. You and I understand good and bad, but what do we do as consumers when all the companies drop their quality and customer service at the same time ? Well it seems this new normal is making the job of giving scores to companies hard because they all do exactly that. Customer service is rubbish with everyone at the moment so that is why I have re-written my review and just dumbed it right down. Kobo is fine, they have a more generic e-reader ie not proprietary like Amazon. However if you do wish to change from Kobo to Amazon in the future, it is the same amount of effort as if you wanted to do it the other way around. You need to DRM strip using software, and then change formats and then upload to your e-reader instead of having it on the cloud.

So whatever company you choose.. Amazon or Kobo, just keep in mind that the Cover for the newer Kobo waterproof readers costs $50. the exact same thing but for the Amazon waterproof readers, costs $100. The books are roughly the same. Kobo readers are just readers. Amazon occasionally puts out readers that will do voice and music too, but not all the time so I have no idea how support for those devices go.

Whatever you choose, both companies have their positives and negatives, both rate the same as both could use improvements.

the main thing is this READ... and e-readers make life so much easier, especially for those that have vision problems as you can adjust font sizes / types / and most are backlit meaning you can read them in bright sun or total darkness.

BM