Barnes & Noble nook Suffers Shipping Delays
Everyone knew that the Barnes & Noble nook (yes, they irritatingly spell it with an e.e. cummings-style lower case “n”) eReader would be popular. EPUB, eReader and native PDF support, memory expansion, Wi-Fi , the ability to share books among friends, the touch sensitive dual screen; all genuinely well thought out features that added to the buying frenzy, to say nothing of the claims of it being a “Kindle-killer” ( I think there’s some validity to that too, though I think it’s more of a spur to Amazon to improve their product than a death knell).
And, much like the Kindle in previous years, the delivery dates for a nook have been moving farther and farther away from the order dates. Originally claimed to be shipping on November 30 for everyone that pre ordered a unit, that date slowly advanced through December and on into January (current orders are supposedly shipping on January 11) creating, among other things, one hell of a secondary nook market on eBay.
All of which is fine, I suppose, and understandable with a new consumer electronic launch. What’s gotten more than a few customers pissed off, though, is the email that arrived in early purchasers’ inboxes yesterday.
You were smart to order your nook early for 2 reasons:
Reason 1 - You'll be one of the first to have one. Your nook is shipping soon and we expect to have it to you by December 9th. As an added bonus, we've upgraded you to overnight shipping!
Reason 2 - To thank you for being one of the first proud nook owners, we're giving you a $10 Barnes&Noble.com Online Gift Certificate.
Now personally, I don’t think it’s that big a deal that there are delays; I don’t think it means (like some conspiracy theorists do) that the nook will never ship, and I don’t think they should have to drop their pants to make it up to early adopters. But I do think they handled it pretty poorly, and wonder one thing: faced with a 10-day shipping delay to thousands of people that pre-ordered a nook, who’s the genius at B&N that not only decided to let them know about the delay on the day it was supposed to ship, but phrased the letter like they’d won the lottery? No explanation or apology, and you can only find information on their web site if you hit their eReading blog. Even there, you’ll find no mention of whether or not people original scheduled for shipment later in the month, but in time for Christmas, are going to be delayed by 10 days or not.
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