Barnes & Noble - unethical false advertising

On June 25th, I downloaded and installed the "B&N eReader" by Barnes & Noble, mainly because their advertisement promised "Five free classic eBooks" and "Free copy of Merriam-Webster's Pocket Dictionary" when you create an account via this app. With other eReader apps for the iPhone (Kindle and iBooks) I have no need for yet another, I view this as a way for Barnes & Noble to ensure people will download their app in hopes of selling more books from their store.

This however is false advertising, as they do not honor the "Five Free classic eBooks" offer, nor do they honor the free Merriam-Webster offer. What you do get is Three free books and two samples, which they then ask you to pay $9.99 for. Not only did they lie, when I called them up they refused to compensate me for my time in both calling them and downloading their eReader app. As I noted in the last paragraph here the B&N app is horrible in comparison to the Kindle or the iBooks app.

Below are screen shots of their unethical false advertising, and a video I took of the phone conversation.





This is a classic case of "bait and switch." They offered the 5 books just long enough to get passed by Apple's approval team for apps. Then they changed it to only 3 books but didn't change the description. Which seems like their intent from the start. They found a way to trick Apple into thinking their description was the truth (because one of the reasons Apple rejects apps is because the description is different from what the app actually does).

Barnes & Nobel cheated me, they cheated Apple, and they cheated you!