Kobo hell

My wife Heather got her Kobo in February and as I wrote in a previous blog I took it over before she even had a chance to use it. She was still in the middle of a traditional book so while she flipped pages I dove into the Kobo and clicked pages. It was wonderful.



 Heather eventually finished her book, placed it on the bookshelf to collect dust, and started sharing her Kobo with me and our daughter Rebekah. We're a reading family so for the short time we've had the Kobo it's been well used. But the other night when I looked at the Kobo something wasn't right. Down the left hand side of the screen there appeared a dark stripe. It distorted everything rendering the page unreadable.

Frustrated, I turned off the device, left it for a few minutes but the line didn't disappear. Ahh!

When Heather saw what had happened to her Kobo she was less than impressed. For those of you who know Heather when I say 'less than impressed' I really mean, 'she freaked out'.

"I've only read one book on the #@%! thing, it can't be broken," she said.

Then she called the Kobo people and the customer service rep told her to flip the device over and reset it by sticking a pin in the little pinhole. Nothing happened, the line would not disappear. Obviously Heather wasn't the first Kobo owner whose called about this problem because the customer service rep was not surprised when we couldn't reboot the device. She told us she would send out a courier envelope so we could send the Kobo back to them where they will attempt to fix it and if that's not possible, mail us a new one. It should take two to three weeks. Heather was asked what colour her Kobo in case a new one has to be shipped out to us. That kind of tells me the device will probably be easier to replace than repair.

I do enjoy the Kobo but this unexpected problem has left me unimpressed. Ours is only a month and two weeks old and it's already broken under normal working conditions. Yes, ebooks are cheaper to buy but if the readers break this easily I wonder about the technology. Are Kindles and other ereaders experiencing similar problems? I'd be interested in hearing from you if you've had a similar problem. In the meantime I'm going to go back in time to start reading a traditional new book I got for my birthday. I know I can count on it to not break before I finish the story!