Download Book, The Ruining of a Good Feature

1-3 Months ago Safari Books finally started allowing you to download full books in pdf. It used to be that you had to download chapters of books in pdf. This was annoying even if you had tokens to do it. Tokens are Safari Books way of making sure we aren't pirating en masse, you get 5 tokens a month and can only keep 3 months worth. So now we can download full books how nice? right?

Well it would be except the only books you can download without buying more tokens are pocket references, those cost 6 tokens, so over 1 months worth. Most books are 16 tokens and I think I saw an 18 token one. I'm sorry but this is just GREEDY, I currently pay $439.99 a year for this service, isn't that enough for me to be able to download 4 books a year?

I probably wouldn't be complaining about this if they allowed you to keep all unspent tokens, I have about 2 years worth now. I actually asked for that.

We would like to inform you that according to Safari terms of service, we will not be able to reinstate the unused tokens.

No, of course not, and I knew that when I asked, but it didn't hurt to ask, or point out that I've used virtually no tokens over 2 years of subscription.

Well O'reilly since I find that this is just pure greed, I won't be renewing my subscription.

Maybe I'm wrong? you know to think that I shouldn't have to pay extra to download a few normal books? what do you think?

Perl by Example not on O'Reilly's Safari

I like Safari. It's a great product that I pay ~$500 a year for. I just started a Perl class and the book is Perl by Example. Guess what it isn't on safari or at least searching for the exact title doesn't find it. I've queried the O'reilly and Prentice Hall people. I pay $500 a year, all the rest of the 'By Example' Books are there, I want my book.

EDIT: O'Reilly's response

Thank you for contacting us about this.

Please note that the books available on Safari Books Online are added to the service at the exclusive discretion of the individual publishers by their internal online content teams and according to their internal guidelines and procedures.

Hence I have forwarded your title request to the respective online content team for consideration. Also please note that due to various resource restraints, our participating publishers may not be able to make all titles available on Safari.

If you have any other questions, please reply to this email. We will be glad to help you in this regard.

EDIT: It's been a couple of weeks and the teacher has given an assignment from the book. The book is still not of safari. I will have to buy it, it seems.

EDIT: It's out now Perl by Example, 4th Editon

Ah typical as usual some company has made my life harder even though I'm paying them to make it easier, given I understand the reason. But I don't have to like it.