OK selection. High prices. Poor customer service.
Written: Apr 04 '04 (Updated Apr 04 '04)
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Albris is an online bookseller which is teamed up with many smaller booksellers to offer a fairly good range of new and used books (for a single seller). This arrangement means two things for the average customer:
(1) You could end up paying a lot more (typically about twice as much although this is not very consistent) for the book than by contacting the seller directly (see below for how to do this). In fact, they often list the exact same books (from the same used bookseller) listed by other services for $10-20+ less.
(2) They have a beter selection than most typical used booksellers. The selection appears comparable to that you will find through Powells and amazon, borders, etc.. used book services. However, the selection is not as good as you will get using a free online book search service such as bookfinder, addall, bibliofind, and abebooks, etc.. In fact I highly reccomend you try one of these before buying from alibris:
www.bookfinder.com
The best - search a whole bunch of booksellers to get
the best selection, quality, and price.
www.addall.com
Similar to bookfinder but not as good. The interface is
more cumbersome since you must search for new and used
books separately. You may find books not listed
through bookfinder.
www.abebooks.com
Similar to bookfinder/addall but the selection is much
smaller. Also, bookfinder automatically searches
abebooks inventory. This site appears to be maintained
by people who love book collecting. They maintain a
nice glossary that can help beginners decipher what
typical used book descriptions mean (i.e. shaken,
foxing, quarto, etc...).
www.bibliofind.com
Similar to abebooks. Again, bookfinder automatically
searches bibliofind's inventory so it is best to just
search through that instead.
Getting back to alibris, the ordering process and interface are both high quality and easy to use. The process of shipping a book can vary with the bookseller used, but is typically excellent for titles they themselves carry. Unfortunately, customer service appears to be a mess, particularly when they sell books through a service such as half.com. This is not normally a problem, but if they accidentally ship the wrong book etc... you are in for a lot of headache in getting them to listen. I bought approximately 10 books from them without incident before they shipped me the wrong book on my last order. This began my customer service nightmare experience with them, as detailed below for those who are interested. I cannot reccomend them at this time for normal commerce. However, they may be worth trying if they have the only copy of a book available and you are willing to lose the money involved or go through a customer service headache (i.e. you are a gambler).
For me, Alibris shipped the wrong book (this sort of thing has happened to me several times over the years and I have always found booksellers very helpful and cooperative). This error could easily be seen by the discrepancy between the order information and alibris' own invoice. I e-mailed them twice about this through half.com's bookseller inquiry service (as directed on the invoice) thinking I would hear back soon and that the problem would be easy to fix. Unfortunately, alibris did not answer these two e-mail inquiries. I then used half.com buyer protection services. This was also a headache and required two additional e-mails and my giving a lot of information before they investigated my claim. At this point they acknowledged thier error, lied about their ability to send a replacement, told me to return the book at my expense (with possible reimbursement - up to $3.25) using shipping methods of their exact specifications. Then said they might give me a refund, but explicitly would not guarantee it (only if it is "warranted"). After three additional e-mails I heard back from Alibris customer service and was given a postage paid return label so that I did not have to risk the shipping costs. I am still not sure if I will get a refund or if they will refund my original shipping costs. A typical used book dealer (or any merchant) would take back the item with a minimum of explanation and give an immediate full refund - requiring little effort on the part of the buyer. This is true for cases even when the bookseller does not possess full documentation of thier mistake. For Alibris I found that even when I could get them to respond, they put all of the responsibility on the customer to fix thier mistake. I have full documentation of these facts which I have remitted to Alibris in my e-mails surrounding this matter.
Recommended:
No
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