(NOTE: I’ve updated at the bottom, including a screencap one reader received. EC admits they are missing records for THREE YEARS. Follow-up post, including text of Patty Marks’ email to the ec_biz loop emphasizing they have redundant backups is HERE.)
Good news!
According to someone who posted on the #notchilled Twitter hashtag conversation thread (who also claims they’ve been an EC employee for 5 years), any Ellora’s Cave customer who lost books WILL have their books restored to them, which were lost in the new site build, and all they have to do is e-mail them. AND, she claims, customers are NOT required to have receipts, just to e-mail them and contact them.
This is good news for anyone who’s previously reported to me that they were refused their libraries because they didn’t have receipts. (Feel free to share this post to help pass the word around.)
The user in question is @mehl_angelique and I’ve got Twitter screenshots below (start from the bottom and work your way up) to illustrate.
Now, as of this posting, despite me asking twice for a direct e-mail address, I didn’t get a response from that user. So I went to the Ellora’s Cave website and the only general e-mail address I could find that wasn’t for submissions was: [email protected] If I am given a better e-mail address to use, I will update this post. I couldn’t find a Help or FAQ page on the EC website for people to go to with questions about restoring their libraries.
If you have tried to get your books restored and were told no, you need receipts, please contact me, especially if you have screenshots or still have the e-mails. Or, if you attempt to contact EC now and don’t get a response, or are told no, please contact me with screenshots/e-mails.
BUT, if you DID get your books back, please also feel free to sound off about that, too. If EC is going to do the right thing and restore books, I certainly want to make sure they are recognized for that as well. (I believe in getting the full story out, the positive and the negative.) It will certainly help rehabilitate customers’ faith in them if they are doing the right thing and restoring books to people, even without receipts.
Start from the bottom and work your way up. (There is overlap on the screenshots so I didn’t miss anything.)
So, as you can see from the thread (starting at the bottom and working up) Angelique says that you just need to e-mail them.
Good luck, and please let me know what you find out. Feel free to chime in on the #notchilled hashtag on Twitter about your experiences, too, positive or negative. As I said, if EC is doing the right thing, I definitely want people to be made aware of that as well. I want the full story out there, all sides of it.
UPDATE:
This stands on its own. It’s a reply to an e-mail a customer sent today after seeing the tweets.
THREE. YEARS.
I got back SOME of my books but not others. I had a lot of books that have since had the rights returned to the authors or are no longer available on EC and they did nothing about this. I felt they could have at least offered a store credit for part of the amount or something. The reason I even realized it was my first Kindle that had the books on it, quit working so I went to download them to my new one. Needless to say, I was NOT happy 🙁
My experience was the same as June M. Although, I was required to send receipts and about half of the books were no longer available. I had hundreds of receipts and lost 300 – 400 books. It was a huge mess and even if the Dear Author law suit hadn’t happened, I would not buy from them again. This was my second time losing my library from their site. I have learned my lesson this time.
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You asked for positive or negative feedback so here is a quick update.
I was one of EC’s customers who lost an enormous library when EC lost their data the first time. At the time I was told, no receipts, no can help. This time my losses were minimal but that was primarily because you can sometimes teach an old dog new tricks and I had a strict policy of buying the majority of my EC books from Amazon whenever possible.
After the debacle in July when the site went down with zero notice and then came back up a few days later with all customer data lost once again I quickly learned that EC was offering to restore user libraries on a case by case basis if the customer could once again provide receipts. Since my losses stretched back more than 7 years and the receipts were on the same trashed hard drive as the books I bought, I just sighed and rolled my eyes at how convenient the data loss was for EC in the midst of a very messy lawsuit that hinged on….records.
But last week when Angelique came on Twitter and publicly stated that receipts were no longer a necessity I decided to give it a whirl.
It took me most of a day to compile the list of EC titles that I could remember that I had purchased and I am sure that I probably only came up with about 50% of the titles. But some is definitely better than none so I fired off the list to EC’s Customer Service in a series of lists of approx. 100 titles at a crack. More than 1000 books in all.
To my surprise, I received an almost instant reply from a very sweet CS Rep who said that I would have to be patient but she would do her best to recover my books. No receipts necessary but I did need to know the title. With the caveat that they can only send me titles for books that the rights have not reverted to the author. In three days, I have received 194 of my lost EC titles. As I download each into my reading app it’s like welcoming home an old friend from the war. No, they can’t recreate my library but at least now I have my some of my purchases back and I plan on backing them up ASAP.
I have major problems with EC’s management and many of the decisions they have made but I am reminded that a company is made up of many individuals. I have to thank EC for the foresight to hire many talented writers, editors & artists whose careers I continue to support. I now know they also appear to have at least a few dedicated employees that still want to do the right thing by their customers.
@Julaine – Yes, it’s good to hear that there are good people inside of EC working to help the customers. Thank you for reporting about that.