Suzanne Sanders of Barnes and Noble was kind enough to respond publicly to my post on Barnes and Noble vs. Amazon. She left her note in the comments, but I thought it deserved a higher billing so I'm reproducing it here, along with my reply:

Hi,

I am the assistant manager for Barnes&Noble.com's affiliate program and I wanted to personally apologize for your recent customer experience. Here at Barnes&Noble.com, we pride ourselves in being rated the Number 1 retailer in customer satisfaction for the third year in a row by the American Customer Satisfaction index. So we are unhappy when any of our customers have a bad experience with us. Most of our packages are sent UPS, which is a traceable service. Occasionally, a package is sent by USPS, which is not. Currently, our system automatically looks for a tracking code which it can put into the order information. This code is automatically generated for all orders, which is the cause for your confusion. We are currently revamping our order system and I've alerted our customer service to this bug. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I hope that you will give us another chance in the future.

Sincerely,
Suzanne Sanders
Assistant Manager
Online Partnerships
Barnes&Noble.com

Hi, Suzanne. Thanks for your note. I appreciate your responsiveness, and I certainly recognize that anyone can have one less-than-wonderful experience even in a generally brilliant system. A sample size of one hardly represents a robust experiment.

As an aspiring author, I would prefer to remain on good terms with Barnes & Noble, and I meant what I said about loving the stores. I often drive half an hour farther than I need to in order to visit my "local" Barnes & Noble booksellers rather than visiting the competitor down the street.

Furthermore, I believe in the fundamental principle of choice that drives our current economic system. This is, after all, a free country, and we have long chosen as a nation to embrace free market enterprise. And although a staggering percentage of the world's population still suffers in terrible poverty and hopelessness, I have to admit--sadly--that to this day no other economic system has proven itself better able to provide for the financial, social or emotional needs of the "civilized" world.

So I'll tell you what: if you reinstate the affiliate account I closed--perhaps too hastily--I will gladly post at least one Barnes & Noble link back up on each book page so that my readers have easy access to your system. Far be it from me to deny anyone this small and simple choice when the soul-crushing decisions of war and vengeance have been so recently and so eloquently wrested from our strong yet silent hands.

Sincerely,
EM Sky