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Microsoft Kills Off Its Book Store, Offers Refunds to Everyone
Microsoft has decided to discontinue the books category in the Microsoft Store, with customers no longer allowed to purchase new content since April 2.
Furthermore, the software giant says that all books would be removed in July 2019, and users would be offered refunds for their purchases.
"Starting April 2, 2019, the books category in Microsoft Store will be closing. Unfortunately, this means that starting July 2019 your ebooks will no longer be available to read, but you'll get a full refund for all book purchases," the company announces [Ed's note: blank without JS --FP].
"While you can no longer purchase or acquire additional books from the Microsoft Store, you can continue to read your books until July 2019 when refunds will be processed."
All refunds will be offered with the same payment method that you used to purchase books from the store, Microsoft says. In case this method is no longer valid or if you purchased a book using a gift card, the credit is added to your Microsoft account and you can then spend it in the Microsoft Store. [...]
Also at the BBC.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:09PM (12 children)
It probably helps that almost nobody has bought books from Microsoft.
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(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:13PM (9 children)
I did not even know I could buy a book from Microsoft.
Well, not buy exactly.
(Score: 4, Touché) by bob_super on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:18PM (7 children)
Apparently, it turns out to have been "escrow some money while you have access to the books, and get all the money back after you're done" rather than "buy".
Which, in retrospect, is a pretty amazing deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @09:57PM (3 children)
If only inflation weren't a thing ...
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 04 2019, @10:33PM (2 children)
In some jurisdictions, they will likely have to reimburse people with inflation (not sure whether they actually served any of those jurisdictions).
Otherwise, you lose inflation*price in exchange for a few years of access to the books, which is still a pretty amazing rental fee.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday April 05 2019, @02:36AM (1 child)
Except that you'll get MS Store credit if you've switched banks or something. And that's nowhere near parity value with cash.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday April 05 2019, @04:21PM
True, but it's not exactly fair (and I'm talking about MS, here... argh) to blame them for the worst-case option, which is a logical choice and leads them to give you twice as much "value" for your money (unless you can unread the books).
The best-case is better than most retailers usually provide.
Stop making me say nice things about MS, would you ?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 05 2019, @02:34AM
Not exactly. An escrow means the money are use/disbursed on very specific purposes (established in the beginning), the entity that holds the escrow can not use the money for anything else.
In this case, MS could use the money for whatever purposes it wanted, as long as it provided access to the "bought" books.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Friday April 05 2019, @11:50AM
"after *we're* done"
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Friday April 05 2019, @12:45PM
Except if you are in these categories:
Microsoft will keep it in that case:
In other words "fuck you, its ours now".
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday April 05 2019, @02:00AM
You can't. You can only rent them, same as any other DRMd content.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:31PM (1 child)
Easy now - one of those six Microsoft book readers is a millenial incel with an AR-15. You don't want to trigger him - errr - her - it?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 04 2019, @08:03PM
Your manuka k-factor is high, but I know the truth.
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