09-20-2010, 05:28 AM | #16 | |
Junior Member
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Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Australia
Device: EZreader Pocket Pro
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Quote:
And $25 for shipping isn't so bad - it was $45 to get my PP to Australia. If Astak don't get their act together pretty soon, they will lose sales (if they haven't already). They must have some idea of when the website is going to be back up. |
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09-20-2010, 08:02 AM | #17 | |
Wizard
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Location: TAS, Australia
Device: Astak Pocket Pro (Black), 2 x Kindle WiFi (Graphite), iPod Touch 4G
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Astak should have posted a notice on their website and redirected customers to buy.com (or another affiliate) for people who wanted to buy one temporarily. |
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09-20-2010, 05:22 PM | #18 |
Fanatic
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Yup, they should use a backup.
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09-20-2010, 06:42 PM | #19 | |
Klaatu Barada cough-cough
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Location: Sydney, Australia
Device: ECO Reader
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Quote:
Astak and Ezreader are separate companies, right? I'd guess that these "technical" difficulties are really the result of the two business units establishing demarcation protocols, basically due to "splitting the business". For Trade Practices reasons they probably need to establish clear lines of separation between the two so that they are not breaking anti-trust regulations. In other words these issues are more likely related to legal, financial and management constraints, rather than some actual technical issue with the website. Someone, somewhere is waiting for some decision maker higher up the food chain to make a decision, or to sign-off on something...meanwhile, the webmaster and potential Astak/Ezreader clients are sitting around twiddling their thumbs...or are they? I can hardly blame Jennifer for being circumspect at this time, but I must agree with others here who said that BUY.COM is woefully inadequate as far as international sales to Australia goes. And the suggestion to "keep checking the ezreader.com website" with no clear indication of when it will be ready to accept orders? Well let's just say it's not the way to win the confidence of potential customers. Personally, I could not wait any longer and I have now purchased an ECO 6" via DA Direct in Melbourne. It was an extremely easy and smooth process. The unit arrived within 4 days, and the total cost including GST, freight and "credit card processing fee" was $217.91. So yes, in my case at least, Astak are losing business due to these "transition" difficulties. (sorry for the long post - just my 2cents worth) |
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09-21-2010, 12:00 AM | #20 | |
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09-21-2010, 06:16 AM | #21 | |
Klaatu Barada cough-cough
Posts: 3
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Sydney, Australia
Device: ECO Reader
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Quote:
I found MR in early August (I think) and started reading posts and lurking around for a while. I learned about Astak, and robertb and read some of his posts. I thought "...hey that's pretty cool, the marketing dude for the company is helpful, and posts all the time, and he seems to know his stuff...". For me that was a mark in Astak's favour, so... A week later I go to place an order and their international shopping page shows out of stock for everything! WTF? I come here and find out robertb is gone. That's when I registered here and posted my original query to Jennifer. I have no doubt that Astak/Ezreader will overcome all their current difficulties in time. I'd certainly consider buying a 9" reader (or two) from them if they ever release one, if it's competitively priced and if the support is there...why not? But right now? Here in oz? It's a no-brainer |
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09-21-2010, 12:15 PM | #22 | |
Well trained by Cats
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Jennifer.. If you want to keep you job (as long as possible), play dumb to these (IMHO good) ideas. I think this is what got Robert axed Robert was a Salesman, he wanted to sell EZReaders, so he made suggestions to improve Sales and the product. The evil PM, knew better Americans are obsessed with "names" of things. When I was in the UK, I noticed business name (You called it that) (this from a country that has unique names for groups of animals bevy of: pride of ). Robert knew the American way to sales |
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09-24-2010, 04:19 AM | #23 |
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Astak is a joke. Allegedly they have a product to sell, have a website for it, and yet there's no way to buy it. I don't consider Buy.com a serious alternative because you have no way of knowing which version you are getting due to the scarcity of specs.
I'm out of here. Astak can take a flying leap.... I'm buying another product. Post on Facebook, they don't answer, send an e-mail, they don't answer. Are they serious about this market? |
09-24-2010, 08:04 AM | #24 |
Wizard
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Device: Kobo Aura HD, Kindle Paperwhite, Asus ZenPad 3, Kobo Glo
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It definitely feels like Astak is exiting the eReader market. Time to move on? Since Astak itself is staying in business with other CE devices, hopefully they will continue to support existing ereaders thorough a reasonable period of time going forward.
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09-24-2010, 10:50 AM | #25 | |
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Dale |
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09-24-2010, 07:51 PM | #26 |
Wizard
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Well, ok DaleDe; we can choose to disagree.
I will only add -- as someone in the industry, broadly defined (and not in any way a competitor to Astak) -- that Astak has no credible public business plan to survive the next phase of the eReader/eBook industry. Closing its ebook store will likely happen in very short order. It is impossible to believe a low volume vendor like Astak can "skip" the end of 2010 sales and survive. They are clearly doing their best to find a soft-landing and cancelled any existing hardware orders in July when RobertB was let go. As a company with integrity, their goal now is simply to adequately service existing customers, and any stragglers, throughout the warranty period without adding any new customers and future liabilities. |
09-27-2010, 07:18 PM | #27 |
NE1 seen my glasses?
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I've seen this mentioned by a couple people and was wondering how peeps outside Astak know as a fact.
Yes, all signs and silence (especially Jenifer's) leads to the conclusion that Astak ereaders ain't coming back, but I sincerely hope that is not the case. I sincerely hope Steven Lake and DaleDe have their stories right. I'm ready to buy another ereader, and I'd like to be seriously considering the Astak 6+. I would really like to support a quality unit that the Astak has shown itself to be. When you consider you don't have to shop around for a cover or a charger, I don't consider the Astak price to be out of line . But although I got immediate response from Astak support for my cracked PPro screen once Jenifer got involved, this whole soap opera where no one else seems to get any support, and the website is a continuing slap in the customer's face, really forces me to just sit and wait to see how things pan out. One of the reasons I have also been considering the nook is because it would allow my wife I to share B&N books between her iPad (w/nook app) and the nook (for me), and to also then share library books between the nook (for her) and the Astak (for me). While I really would rather not get into the practice of DRM-stripping, I have concluded that for the number of books my wife might actually purchase that we would want to share, I can live with it and buy an Astak Plus. But its not gonna happen if I don't have the feeling that they are going to be in the business longer than it takes to sell their current inventory. Life would be so much easier if the iPad supported ADE, but I would still be waiting around to see if Astak is really still in the ereader market before making a purchasing decision. C'mon, Jenifer give us a hint. |
09-28-2010, 11:58 AM | #28 | |
Groupie
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Quote:
With that said, I am currently aiming for a Sony 650 to be purchased Black Friday weekend (traditional kick off to the holiday shopping season with nuts sales the day after the US's Thanksgiving holiday). If Astak has something announced and available before then I will consider it fully against the Sony 650. The same if Asus produces as promised. But this new Sony has pretty much all the functionality I have been waiting for and want to have, but little fluff that I don't want so Astak or Asus will have to come up with something really good to get my money. |
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09-28-2010, 04:09 PM | #29 |
EZ Read Team Member
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I just want to clarify for everyone: EZ Read/Astak is not leaving the eBook market. I can assure you, truly, we are not leaving.
There are things that we must legally keep private about the going-ons at Astak, and we ask that all of you respect that this is still a very public forum, albeit with a close-knit group of posters. |
09-28-2010, 04:34 PM | #30 |
NE1 seen my glasses?
Posts: 396
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Location: Seattle
Device: Nook Glowlight (following previous nook STR and STR w/GL)
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Thank you for the response, Jenifer.
I, for one, appreciate acknowledgement that Astak is still here. However, we are not asking for secret inside Astak industry information -- merely an occasional word of assurance Astak still intends to be in the eReader market. This is something silence and a website shutdown going on 3 weeks doesn't do. We are aware this is a very public forum, and as such we would expect a company to address concerns raised by the website shutdown. Thank you for giving some level of assurance. I, for one, will just sit back and wait for the Astak website to come back before commenting or proceeding further. |
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