Harper Collins - Incompetence Extraordinaire
So, I got an email where Harper Collins is offering another free ebook (The Serpent Bride: DarkGlass Mountain Series, Book 1 by Sara Douglass). Guess they took a hint from Baen and Tor that this might be the way to introduce people to authors. But boy, talk about work!! I'm on dialup and it took a good 3 hours to download the latest Adobe reader. Tor does not require the latest Adobe, so I'd been postponing getting it. But today I thought, well gotta do it sometime and bit the bullet.
So fine, I download Adobe 8, install, reboot, go back to the Harper Collins site and log in. Yeah, they torture you by making you create an ID and log in, blah blah blah. (I have a handy throwaway ID and email I use for crap like that. ) And holy feces!! the Adobe page comes up again and another Adobe page pops up. That's TWO adobe pages. I kid you not. And they want me to download another piece of crapola which will probably take another fucking coupla hours. I wouldn't be surprised if it's some asinine DRM thingy.
So I think I can safely say I will not deal with Harper Collins/Eos again and I plan to avoid buying any of their books. I have no idea who they publish and I don't care. They couldn't possibly publish anything worth their stupidity in pissing me off like this. Good thing I have 12 library cards.
Well crap crap crap. They publish Pratchett and Bujold. Well, they're rich already so I'll buy them used. Because this I will not give in on.
I went back to the email offering the free book and HC has a handy link "To unsubscribe from all future HarperCollins e-mail about special offers, new products, and free resources, click here". And, not amazingly, that link leads to a page which says:
We're Sorry
The page you are looking for may have been moved, or doesn't exist anymore. Please follow one of the links below, or use our search tool above. Thanks for visiting!
ETA: Well, in response to my email to them, I got sent "help" links. Turns out I was not supposed to download Adobe 8, ohno, (even though I got a bigass message saying it wouldn't download the book unless I had the latest Adobe) but if I have it I need to download Adobe Digital Editions (i.e.more adobe crap ) which is, you know, easier to navigate and will enhance my reading experience. Yeah. Fucking Asstards.
So fine, I download Adobe 8, install, reboot, go back to the Harper Collins site and log in. Yeah, they torture you by making you create an ID and log in, blah blah blah. (I have a handy throwaway ID and email I use for crap like that. ) And holy feces!! the Adobe page comes up again and another Adobe page pops up. That's TWO adobe pages. I kid you not. And they want me to download another piece of crapola which will probably take another fucking coupla hours. I wouldn't be surprised if it's some asinine DRM thingy.
So I think I can safely say I will not deal with Harper Collins/Eos again and I plan to avoid buying any of their books. I have no idea who they publish and I don't care. They couldn't possibly publish anything worth their stupidity in pissing me off like this. Good thing I have 12 library cards.
Well crap crap crap. They publish Pratchett and Bujold. Well, they're rich already so I'll buy them used. Because this I will not give in on.
I went back to the email offering the free book and HC has a handy link "To unsubscribe from all future HarperCollins e-mail about special offers, new products, and free resources, click here". And, not amazingly, that link leads to a page which says:
We're Sorry
The page you are looking for may have been moved, or doesn't exist anymore. Please follow one of the links below, or use our search tool above. Thanks for visiting!
ETA: Well, in response to my email to them, I got sent "help" links. Turns out I was not supposed to download Adobe 8, ohno, (even though I got a bigass message saying it wouldn't download the book unless I had the latest Adobe) but if I have it I need to download Adobe Digital Editions (i.e.more adobe crap ) which is, you know, easier to navigate and will enhance my reading experience. Yeah. Fucking Asstards.