Rube Reality

Over the last year or so, I’ve rediscovered the Public Library. What a wonderful place – free books and a better selection than any bookstore. What’s more, since I last heavily used public libraries 15 years ago, everything can be done on the internet. Need an interlibrary loan? Place it on a web site, and get an email when the book is available for pickup at your local branch. Need to renew that long Tolstoy novel? Do it on the web and never step into the library, giving yourself more time to read (and save on gas!) I could go on for days waxing eloquent about how wonderful public libraries are. Not to mention, library employees tend to be much more knowledgable than bookstore employees. (I actually had a book-clerk in a mall outlet bookstore tell me where the “Crimes” section was when I asked for Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment).

Now compare that to a national bookstore chain, which I won’t name, but sounds like “Barnes & Noble.” First off, as a corporate entity, their first interest is to make money. If that means not carrying books because a single loony fundamentalist finds something objectionable and threatens a boycott, they have no problem with that – and I don’t care for whack-jobs deciding what’s appropriate for me, as an adult, to read or not read. Oh, they can claim it’s to protect their children all they want – but your children are your responsiblity, not mine, and if you can’t keep tabs on what your kids are reading, that’s your failure as a parent and you’re the one who should be punished for it, not me. (I’m sure you will be, when that kid is a 30- or 40-something, still living at home mooching off your retirement and forcing you to work until you’re dead!) A corporation like B&N will also give information to the government without a warrant – a library will fight that, and I prefer to patronize establishments that look out for everyone’s rights instead of their own perceived best interests.

Now, there’s a specific reason I’m picking on B&N. They have a membership program for $25 per year that “awards” you discounts on purchases. If you do a lot of shopping at B&N (like I used to), it’s a smart thing to get and will pay itself off quickly. However, as I’ve spent more time looking for books that aren’t brand new, or esoteric, or whatever, I’ve spent no money at B&N over the last year. So when I got the renewal notice in the mail, I followed the directions to get on their website to make sure it wasn’t automatically renewed. Automatic renewal is spun as a “convenience” for B&N’s customers, and if you’re still shopping there regularly, I’m sure it is. However, their website, like many others in the world, looks good but has some serious functionality issues. I couldn’t associate the web account I set up with my membership number, and as a result, couldn’t change the “renewal preferences” so easily as the mailing proclaimed. So I sent them a message via their online form:

I don’t want to have my membership automatically renewed, but can’t find any option to do that, nor am I able to register my member number to review my member profile.

Here’s the email I received a couple of days later from B&N:

from Barnes & Noble Member Services
to xxx@xxx
date Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 1:36 PM
subject Re: BN Member – Member Number:xxxxxxxxx (xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)
mailed-by barnesandnoble.com

Nov 23

Dear Member,

Thank you for the information you have provided us regarding your Barnes & Noble Membership. In order to assist you, we need you to reply to this email with one of the following information below:

-Phone number
-Last four digits of the credit card #
-Last store in which your Membership was used.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

We look forward to your next visit.

Sincerely,

Mayra

Customer Service Representative
Barnes and Noble

http://www.bn.com/

Original Message Follows:
————————

Member Number: xxxxxxxxxx
IP: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5)
Gecko/20091106 Shiretoko/3.5.5
First Name: xxx
Last Name: xxx
Email: xxx@xxx.xxx
Mailing Address: xxx
city: xxx
State: xx
Zip Code: xxxxx
Country: xxx

I don’t want to have my membership automatically renewed, but can’t find any option to do that, nor am I able to register my member number to review my member profile.

This electronic mail message contains information that (a) is or may be CONFIDENTIAL, PROPRIETARY IN NATURE, OR OTHERWISE PROTECTED BY LAW FROM DISCLOSURE, and (b) is intended only for the use of the addressee(s) named herein. If you are not an intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and take the steps necessary to delete the message completely from your computer system.

Not Intended as a Substitute for a Writing: Notwithstanding the Uniform Electronic Transaction Act or any other law of similar effect, absent an express statement to the contrary, this e-mail message, its contents, and any attachments hereto are not intended to represent an offer or acceptance to enter into a contract and are not otherwise intended to bind this sender, barnesandnoble.com llc, barnesandnoble.com inc. or any other person or entity.

This was my response:

Apology NOT accepted. I have requested you to not charge me money for a membership I no longer desire, and find it interesting that you want more info to do that than you would to automatically renew the membership – and that you want me to send more personally identifiable information in a plain text email. Clearly, protecting me from identity theft/fraud is not your motive, and if you DO charge me, I will simply send these emails to my bank and have them cancel the charge.

Have a nice day, but don’t expect me to visit your stores anytime soon.

Sincerely,

This is exactly the kind of thing I expect from a national book chain (and some local ones too), but I can’t ever imagine and have never experienced with a public library.

It’s rather tragic for me to think that we had a ballot initiative in my county to increase spending on libraries that would have resulted in an increase of $30/household in property taxes – and it failed.

Tags: Barnes & Noble, Corporate BS

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 18:19 and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.