For updates: see below.

Dear Mike Serbinis, dear Todd Humphrey, dear Dan Leiby, dear Greg Twinney, dear Michael Tamblyn, Dear Matthew Welch…

- let me catch my breath for a minute… -

I love you guys. Not in a romantic kind of way (not yet anyway), but definitely in a way where you are my heroes for developping the Kobo eReader. You are entrepreneurs, you see possibilities, you create something out of nothing, and you are all about making great products.

So why… dear Mike, Todd, Dan, Greg, Michael and Matthew.. why are you breaking my heart? I bought a Kobo touch a couple of weeks ago. I used it for 14 days, and then it broke down. And I’m not talking about “have you tried turning it off and on again”-kind of troubles. I’m talking about hardcore breakdown, the stuff nightmares are made of: a frozen, non responsive, flatlined Kobo Touch.

I don’t care. Shit happens. Pet gerbils die. Stuff breaks.

What I care about, is what happened next. Get comfortable, have another cup of tea, and let me tell you the story of my beloved Kobo Touch.

- I e-mailed your servicedesk, explaining how the Kobo had died on me, and how I had tried resetting it (hard reset, soft reset, get on your knees and pray to God reset).

- Your servicedesk responded 4 (fourrrrr) days later by suggesting I try a hard reset or a soft reset.

(Yes guys, yes. That is what they said. That’s what I had waited fourrrrrr days for. It’s like coming home from, say, a beautiful concert, and you’re telling your best friend about the great time you had, only to have him/her reply “so how was the concert?” It hurts guys, it hurts.)

- I picked myself up, dried my tears, and tried again. I asked your service-desk-lady to please please pretty please take 12 seconds and have a real look at my issue.

- The reply (this time it only took two days, it blew my mind!) was as follows: “Your eReader needs to be returned to the reseller for repairs.”

Right, right, I see how that might need to happen. Unfortunately, my reseller (www.wehkamp.nl) said exactly the opposite: “contact Kobo for repairs”. I know what you’re thinking: bureaucracy? In our line of work? Impossible!

- I asked the lady at the service desk: don’t you have any authorized repair services that Kobo works with? And whaddayaknow? You do! It’s called Libris. And that’s exactly what the last e-mail from the service desk said: “Contact Libris”. That was it. I’m not lazy, I can use the internets to find out what Libris is exactly, but really: would it have been so much trouble to at least give me a url or a phone number? I guess it was. Just “Libris”. One word, which took me over a whole week to get. One word, and it’s not even an exceptionally beautiful word or anything. (I mean, if she would have given me a word like ‘oscillation’ or 'onomatopee’, it would have been a whole different story altogether).

Well, I’ll stop bothering you now. You have other, much more urgent business to attend to. I just wish one of you would give me a sign, a signal, something from high up within the ivory tower of Kobo. A tweet, an e-mail, heck, even an old fashioned letter will do, saying: Patrick, we hear 'ya. We’re sorry we’ve made you work so hard, even though you’re the customer, and people like you pay our bills. It would make my day. It would make me forget about the broken Kobo Touch, and the indifference shown by your service department.

Now, if you’ll excuse me: I have a date with my friend Google. I need to find a way to contact Libris, and hope for the best!

Thanks for reading, forever a fan,

Patrick.

Update 30-08: Got a very kind reply from Mike Serbinis (www.twitter.com/mserbinis):

Sounds promising!

Update 30-08 (2): Just got a great call from Darrell at Kobo Executive Care. Kobo is replacing the broken Kobo Touch with a brand new one (a black one even: no more jokes about my lilac casing, yay!) but more importantly: I got the kind of response I think suits the way customers deserve to be treated in a social economy (and Darrell agreed): It’s ok if things break down, it happens. But as a customer, you want to feel as though you’re important, not only when you’re considering buying a product, but also after you’ve bought it. A customer should not have to be forced to turn into the “squeaky wheel” everytime he or she gets into trouble with their product.

I think it’s safe to say that Kobo really gets it, just not everyone at the service desk. I hope I didn’t get anyone into any trouble though: we all make mistakes, I know I did and still do, and as long as they make us better at what we do, it’s fine with me.

For all of you who haven’t read it: go out and buy http://thankyoueconomybook.com for a great explanation of the Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuck. It’s also available in the Kobo Book Store ;)

So, thank you Kobo, for a more than adequate response, and for taking the trouble to set things straight.

ps. for everyone contacting me on what I’m doing with the broken Kobo Touch: I am sending it back. Sorry! ;)