Why I Do Not Like AbeBooks...

Hello lovely people of the internet, I’d hate to start this blog with a rant, but I really do have something to complain about that’s been bothering me.

The world today does about 65% of its shopping online… Just kidding, I made that statistic up, but it’s believable, right? :p Now, a while back I ordered a textbook online on this site called AbeBooks thinking it would arrive within two to three weeks, as promised. (It LOOKED pretty reliable… I was wrong…)

Flash forward three weeks, and the book hasn’t arrived, now it was pretty important that I had this book by a certain time so I ended up renting another one for about $80 until I could get mine, hopefully, within a week, and then get a full refund. Flash-forward a week, and the book still does not come. So I am now unable to return my rental for my $80… which is no big deal, I’m thinking “Whenever my book actually comes I might as well sell it so that I can cover my losses.” (Keep in mind that this book cost about $95 online.)

Now, since I have my book rental, I forgot about the ordered one for a while… let’s say about a month… (hey, life piled a TON of work on me)… and then as I was checking my spam e-mails from the AbeBooks site one afternoon I realize there is no trace of my book… So I use the customer service option on AbeBooks to let them know. They say contact the specific bookseller who was supposed to ship the book… So I do. The bookseller does NOT reply. I contact AbeBooks again, and they say they can neither refund me ANY money or make sure I get the book since its been past 30 days for the book to arrive… WHAT?!

So I have come to the conclusion that not only am I bookless, but I was practically robbed of 95 bucks -.- And to add to my frustration, the bookseller is being silent as a grave.

This got me thinking, if I was a bookseller using AbeBooks, I could just say I shipped something and then never ship it, and assuming that the customer doesn’t reply or contact me within 30 days, thinking it’s just slightly late, then I’m no longer required to refund them… Easy money. Does that seem right to you?

Now I’m not used to online shopping, infact this was my first time so it wasn’t a positively enlightening experience, but if you guys use online shopping sites often, does this ever happen to you? Let me know in the comments below, and if you have any super reliable sites then please share them with me…

But to those of you who have NEVER online shopped, then fear not, I actually tried other sites like Amazon (which was slightly late, but overall alright) and CafePress which was remarkable quick and efficient, so I recommend that should you want to order something online, use those.

Alright, thanks for reading,

Take care!

SiSi xoxo