Half.Com: A Time Saver Too
Written: Aug 15 '01
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The Bottom Line
I wish half the other sites were half as good as Half.com.
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It's one of those books you just can't seem to find anywhere, a specialty book, out of print and enough weren't printed in the original run to make it a used book commodity. You've run a search and come up empty. All the ones in the library have either been stolen or deposited in ye ole dumpster. So what can you do?
Try Half.com.
Long before they were hooked up with EBay, I made my first purchase from Half.com. The book was PLOESTI, an exciting account of the B-24 raids against the Rumanian oil fields during World War II. I found a couple of copies listed elsewhere, very expensive collector's editions I really wasn't interested in. I just wanted to read the book again. So I tried a new upstart dot com which claimed to sell their books at no more than half the jacket price. In this case the book was so old ( April, 1962) that half the jacket would have been close to nothing, so they weren't quite accurate. Nevertheless, it was a real buy. Moments ago, I checked and they have a 1998 edition in stock for $3.00 plus postage.
Since PLOESTI, I've ordered a dozen or so books and videos from Half.com, most since they became affiliated with EBay. In each instance I was absolutely satisfied with all aspects of the purchasing procedure and product. One of our favorite videos came in the original, unblemished box and cost $1.95, virtually the same as the cost of a blank video -- plus media rate postage, of course.
Half.com's setup for finding and ordering is what I like best. First, I can land on the site within seconds of thinking about a product by typing half.com in my browser's location field. A moment later, the search box pops up where I can select the product and type in the title, author, description or whatever. All of the choices, including the close ones, jump on screen within seconds. There is no fumbling around trying to find the search box or waiting forever for Half.com's search engine to sort through every item in the known universe. This is one smart search!
Here in the Sonoran hinterland, it usually takes about a week for products to arrive via media or other forms of mail. If you are in a rush to receive the product, Amazon has been much faster than any of the others I tried. On the other hand, the Amazon prices that I've run comparisons on (at BestBookBuys) have been consistently higher than Half.coms.
Although I originally located Half.com (as a book seller) through BestBookBuys, I've pretty much given up on BBB as a information source. My last search for Saint-Exupery's THE LITTLE PRINCE yielded 101 hits, the vast majority of them foreign language titles. The cheapest English version paperback I could find on BBB cost $13.45. At Half.com I ordered the same book, like new, for $6.70. It should also be noted that the cheaper book was not listed on BBB. Incidentally, although they still carry the BestBookBuys logo, their address is bestwebbuys.com.
Although BBB twice failed to deliver, Half.com has never failed My only gripe against Half.com would be that they offer no provision, that I'm aware of, for ordering other books from the same dealer, thereby possibly saving overall by saving on postage. A couple of my orders actually cost more to ship than the product cost. Even so, the product has always been a bargain.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Member: E. J. McGill
Location: Tucson, AZ
Reviews written: 62
Trusted by: 9 members
About Me: Retired AF B-52 pilot and author of Black Tuesday Over Namsi and Jet Age Man.
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