ecampus.com - Bargains come at a price.
Jan 19 '00 (Updated Jan 26 '00)
I bought my college textbooks online at ecampus.com this year, at the advice of a fellow student.
No, wait, that's not true.
I ordered my college textbooks online at ecampus.com this year, at the advice of a fellow student.
I'll consider my books bought when I, well, receive them. Quite honestly, I made a mistake in trusting my book purchase to this particular company.
As every student knows, textbooks sold at college/university bookstores have outrageous mark-ups, due partly to the overhead associated with a bookstore, and the school's perception that it holds a monopoly over book sales. So, many of us try to be wily by purchasing our books from outside stores or, lately, online, at places like ecampus.com.
ecampus.com sells college textbooks at pretty good discounts. The six books I picked up ended up costing me about $80 less than they would have cost at my school's bookstore. They offer "free" UPS shipping (obviously, the book prices must be padded a bit to cover shipping), which takes about 5 days to reach me in the west coast. I needed these books a bit faster, so I sprung for the 2-day shipping option, for an extra six bucks.
Since a few of my books were in the "Ships within 48 hours," I knew it could, at worst, take up to a week to receive my books, including shipping time. A week isn't very long to wait. Ecampus offers online order tracking, so I figured I'd have the peace of mind of knowing exactly when my books would be ready.
I made a mistake, though. I assumed their "shipping estimates" were, in some way, grounded in reality. Turns out, ecampus.com was wildly off. Off, in fact, by at least a factor of 7.
It has now been almost two weeks and, according to their tracking software, my textbooks have not even left their building. My most optimistic expectation is that they will arrive by the start of the third week since I placed my order.
This may not seem like much to most people, but if you're a student, you know what a pain it can be to go three weeks without access to your textbooks. That's three weeks of assignments that need to be rushed through, hours in the library waiting for another student to finish so that you can start your homework, and having to find a classmate to let you read along with him during lectures.
It seems, like many other online retailers, that ecampus spent more money on flashy advertising, than on making sure they could fulfill their orders.
So, sure, ecampus.com may deliver great prices, but will they ever deliver?
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Update: Jan. 24, 2000 The online tracker said my order "ships today" on Thursday. Today is Monday, and it still says the same thing. Three day processing took two weeks, so it's not too surprising that the day of shipping lasts five days.
Tried calling their support number to cancel my order, but I keep getting a busy signal. Can you say "unprofessional"?
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Update: Jan. 26, 2000. I finally received the books. Ecampus may have been slow, but UPS was nice and speedy. My order cancellation didn't go through, obviously, but I've decided to keep the books anyway. It's easier than mailing them back, and returning the replacement books to my college bookstore is cheaper. A part of me wants to mail 'em back to ecampus, though, just out of spite over their poor service.
Well, that's life.
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