Fun with Amazon

There's a 'Dodge Hover' in Mona Lisa Overdrive. This could be it. All it needs is a row of old, beat up, chrome-plated skulls where the front bumper should be.

I ordered a copy of Mona Lisa Overdrive from Amazon yesterday ($4 for a used hardcover, a penny for the book and $3.99 for shipping) and this button pops up on the screen offering to let me start reading it now. Cool, I've already read the first six pages or so in the preview, I could keep reading it on the screen, so I point and click, and presto! There's the book! Wait a minute, I can't read this, what is this? What is it? It's in Portuguese.
    I figure there's a glitch in the system, so I send 'em an email. I got a reply this morning telling me that I can buy the online version of the book. Nothing about the free version. They do want to know if they solved my problem. Well, no you didn't, so I get redirected to their evaluation form:

I don't know who makes up these forms. They strike me as worse than useless. There is nothing about how they failed to understand the problem in the first place. If you can't get to square one, none of this other s*** matters.

Seems this problem is a little too subtle to communicate by email, so I call. (Calling is their preferred method of contact which was a surprise.) Takes about 30 seconds to get connected to an actual person. (Click the button on the web page, immediately my phone rings, then there's the requisite robo-call announcement telling me that the NSA's minions are listening in, and then poof, a real person comes on the line.) I tell her what happened and she tells me that to read the online version, you need to buy the online version. Okay, looks like there's a glitch in the system. She tells me she's going to make a note of it, which is more than I expected.

P.S. The nice thing about reading the online version is that when you come across an unknown term, you can point and click and get everything the internet knows about it, which is how I got onto the Hattori Clock Tower. On the other hand, I have to sit at my desk and I don't get to sit in my cushy recliner. What I need is a desktop to fit over my recliner. Then I would never have to get up. Oh, wait, I wouldn't be able to get up, I'd be trapped. Help! Let me out!