I Refuse To Pay Full Price For Books Or Music
Written: Jul 26 '01 (Updated Jul 26 '01)
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The Bottom Line
Excellent selection of used books; good selection of music and videos. Collectibles may not always be half-price, but plenty of bargains exist. Needs other shipping options, otherwise 5 stars.
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| Full Review |
Not so long ago, I was looking forward to sales at my local Tower Records, and book markdowns at a few sticks and mortar places like Barnes and Noble and Costco.
If I had to have something right now, I'd pay full price on-line at my favorite Amazon.com, or hope for the occasional sales at CDNow.
All that has changed with my new favorite discount retailer, Half.com, the fixed price off-shoot of auction house giant, Ebay. While I may not find today's bestseller for half price, or less, I know I can always get a good deal on yesterday's thriller, mystery, fantasy, CD or video.
Careful research pays, especially when it is your own hard-earned money. I'll use a couple examples to illustrate this principle, focusing on books and music, since these are my current Funny Hat, (Advisor), concentrations.
Elusive Garrett Files
A marvelous fantasy writer, Glen Cook, has written several series including tales of The Black Company, and this series, featuring Garrett P.I. Combining elements of mystery, (Garrett is a human detective), with fantasy and science fiction, (he's a gumshoe on another world, with a girlfriend and sidekick who both happen to be elves), this collection has several out-of-print, (OOP), titles, and is devilishly hard to get through regular channels.
Ebay regularly offers a title or more, but the bidding wars are fierce, and the ending prices dear. Where a starting bid might be $2.50, the winning bid might be $10.00 for a single volume. That is, of course, before any shipping charges are tacked on.
Half.com occasionally offers these titles, and I appreciate their Wish List function, which enables you to set the top price, book condition, seller parameters, for any tome listed on site. When an offering, meeting your selling price shows up, Half.com will email you with any daily offerings. Tip: Others may be vying for the same book, so the early bird truly catches the worm.
So far, I have obtained 5 of the books in this series, with an average cost of $4.00, at least 50% less than found on eBay, and saving me countless hours of searching flea markets, garage sales and library liquidations. The only gripe I have is regarding the shipping charges.
Whether book, CD, album or video, the media rate, or slowest mailing method, will cost you $2.30. This was recently adjusted, due to changes in postal charges, and the standard first class, or priority shipping fee is $2.99.
While I have had luck with videos and vinyl albums, CDs seem to always arrive with cracked jewel boxes. As you might imagine, packing materials vary widely, and many sellers will try to ship items in unpadded manila envelopes; probably to save on cost.
If I ever decide to sell some of my burgeoning book and music collections, I am determined to ship only in bubble-wrap envelopes!
Half.com does have a good way of communicating any problems with sellers, and sellers have a number of ways to respond to a buyer's complaint/concerns. One video, shipped in a substandard recycled newsprint mailer, arrived with one end of the cassette caved in; an obviously unusable product.
Going to my account page at Half.com, I clicked on this transaction, highlighted communications with seller, and selected the arrived damaged link. There was a message section, where I could mention specifics. I suggested the mailing envelope was probably too meagerly padded to ensure safe arrival, and received an email from the seller in less than 24 hours. Offering a full refund, credited through Half.com, the seller thanked me for my comments, and stated he was going to bubble wrap in the near future.
A Few Things That Needed To Be Changed
Hopefully, someone from Half.com is reading these words and can take them to heart, and possibly set the wheels of change in motion.
Multiple buys from same seller need to have one, combined shipping charge.
For example, if I buy 3 books, at $2.00 each, from kcbooklady, I would pay $6.00 plus a reasonable combined fee, (maybe 1.50 per book), instead of the current individual cost, which would be the ridiculous $6.90. I've purchased bargain rate books for less than a dollar each, and ended up paying more than 75% for shipping!
Account pages, where items ordered are listed, need to have the name of the item, (in addition to the transaction number), shown, without having to click on each, and every transaction.
Half.com encourages buyers to give feedback, similar to eBay, and other on-line sites I've mentioned above. If I've purchased 4 books in my last transaction, and 5 CDs the week before, I don't want to waste my time, electricity, (and here in California, that is a big concern right now!), or hard drive, to click the sometimes slow-loading pages, to see where each vendor shows up, then click again to get back to the original page. That's about 3 to 10 (depending on how soon I can find the right item) page views I don't need each time I go to leave a comment on the sale.
Seller's inventories need to be fully accessible.
Let's say that manisurelovetoswing has some truly great vinyl inventory, and he's got 300 albums to sell. Currently, Half.com only gives you access to 100 of these items. Anything else is not linked, and I haven't found a single way to view these items. Same with books and videos.
Maybe one solution, would be to have a Power Seller tier, where sellers might pay a nominal fee to have the extra Web space available for rabid buyers, such as myself, to view all their wares.
Conclusions
Overall, I am very satisfied with this site. Not only have I found true bargain books, Dwarven Nations, being one highly collectible series I now own, but there are OOP and hard to find vinyl by Joy Of Cooking, Snail, Hummingbird, Phish, Rory Block and others, I am proud to call mine.
I've taken advantage of the link to Epinions.com, and after reading stirring movie, book or music reviews, have often clicked over to Half.com, and been able to purchase, or at least Wish List, some of these recommendations. A recent birthday selection for my beloved Dad, Live Steam, (on paddlewheelers plying the Mississippi River), in a glorious coffee table perfect hardbound edition, was exactly half of what I might have to pay in a bricks and motar establishment.
Half.com sends you order summary, and confirmations when sellers respond to their emails re each sale. With very few exceptions, both books and music arrive in a very timely manner, and in good shape. The books, (mostly paperbacks), and to some extent the music, (mainly CDs), turn out to be in better-than-stated condition.
Of course, there are still a few elusive titles out there. Finding them is a good part of the fun, as any collector knows, and Half.com makes these finds a little more affordable, than retail cousins, either on-line or in-town.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
kcfoxy
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Member: Casey Stewart
Location: West Coast Of Mars
Reviews written: 927
Trusted by: 630 members
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