I PURCHASED A BOOK FOR 39.00. THEY DIDN'T SHIP IT BUT INSTEAD PUT IT BACK OUT FOR SALE FOR HUNDREDS

Abebooks: I wouldn't order from them again, it seems like their surface reviews are pretty ok. But the seller i ordered from shipped two books that arrived dented,

The return process with Abebooks is stressful, because they don't compensate you for the return shipping. Until after the seller or abebooks processes the refund.

There are much better services: thriftbooks, potentially Ebay.

I definitely consider abebooks as a trap,
Where buyers cant leave a review, and in my case: dealing with

A bookstore with low brick and mortar reviews - that sells on abebooks listed as 5 stars, but without the input of buyers on the website to leave a review.
Brick and Mortar review: -https://www.google.com/search?q=lakeside+books&oq=lakeside+books&aqs=chrome.0.35i39j46i175i199i512j0i433i512j0i512l3j69i60l2.1443j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#lrd=0x8810c5f5e8c7d6d5:0xb502ba*******e7900,1,,,

Also- Messaged the seller and did not receive a message.

Abebooks did eventually cover it, The customer service agent went with their word, and went out of policy to cover the return shipping difference, and answered quickly. But the process was painful and an opportunity waste.

I purchased a book,
They sent a CD,
Got no response from the company,
I suppose the joke is on me.

The notice said allow extra time, the book failed to arrive, ABE refused refund due to time expired. See email thread below

Dear Mushfeequa P,

The request exceeded the time that YOU allow because YOU have a statement that appears in my orders to allow extra time because of the slow mail. This is absurd. I followed YOUR instructions and then you penalize me for following YOUR instructions by citing YOUR policy that conflicts with YOUR policy. Notice something, it is all YOURS, not mine.

YOU need to put up at warning about bulk buyers and YOU need to include in your notice about slow mail that YOU have conflicting policy. At lease tell your customers that YOU don't care about them.

In disgust, Axel

Axel E. Borg
Distinguished Wine and Food Science Bibliographer Emeritus
University Library
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA *******
*******@ucdavis.edu

"What a school thinks about its library is a measure of what it feels about education." ― Harold Howe
"The most wonderful job in the world would be as a librarian" ― Charles de Gaulle
*******@abebooks.com
Mon 6/28/2021 10:19 AM
Hello Axel,

Thank you for your patience while I followed up with the bookseller regarding your order below:

Abebooks Order No.: *******
Author: Ascoli, David
Title: The Mons Star: The British Expeditionary Force 1914
Estimated Delivery Date: May 12,2021

Unfortunately, I haven't received a response from the bookseller. Our Security and Trust team has been made aware and they will be working with this bookseller to ensure their future compliance with our Policies.

We would like to acknowledge that this is a bulk-buying account.

I'm very sorry to hear that this order did not arrive as expected. All return and refund requests must be received by AbeBooks within 30 days of the order's estimated delivery date. This includes reports of items that did not arrive. Unfortunately, as your request exceeds this time-frame, we are unable to assist you. In the future, please make to contact us within this period.

You can view the AbeBooks Return Policy here: https://www.abebooks.com/docs/Legal/returnsPolicy.shtml

If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely

Mushfeequa P
The AbeBooks Team

Need further assistance?
Help pages: http://help.abebooks.com/
Contact Us Form: https://www.abebooks.com/customer-support/

Security Tip - Please do not send credit card numbers or confidential information via e-mail or other non-secure methods.

www.abebooks.com | www.abebooks.co.uk | www.abebooks.de | www.abebooks.fr | www.abebooks.it | www.iberlibro.com

*******************************
Order: *******

# *******

I waited additional time since each order had a notice that shipping time was extended. I tried to contact the bookseller and got no reply. I then sent a message to the bookseller to request a refund. Today I tried to initiate a refund and was told that I had waited too long. I followed the guidance on the site.

Please get this guy to refund my money.

Axel

AbeBooks Order No.: *******
Sales Order No.: *******
Book Title: The Mons Star: The British Expeditionary Force 191
Estimated Delivery Date: Wed. May 12,2021
*******************************

I'm an Australian, living in Australia and a long-term Abe Books AUSTRALIA Account Customer, who a day ago at midnight purchased (paid using my Bank Credit Card) ~ two (2) second-hand books:

One book from an Australian Abe Book Seller (Tasmania), advertising the Book in Australian Dollars, with Free Shipping (current Abe Books Sale pitch) and,

One book from a New Zealand Abe Book Seller (Auckland, NZ) priced in NZ Dollars. Both said mentioned Abe Books Australia Websites immediately Disappeared upon when ‘Clicking & Sending To' the Abe Books Australia Account "My Basket & Purchase" along with the AUD$ & NZ$ Book Prices ~ Now All in USA Dollar Amounts, including Shipping Costs.

I e-mailed Abe Books Customer Support ~ "Ra'eesah L" from 'The AbeBooks Team' (*******@abebooks.com - mailed-by: amazonses.com. Signed by: abebooks.com) ~ "Ra'eesah L" e-mail replied at 08:28 AM today (08/05/2021) ~ "Ra'eesah L" and ‘Abe Books Customer Service' REPLY is an insult! I quote below from:

"... I'm sorry to hear that your credit card company charged a additional fees for order transactions... You can avoid International Transaction Fees by limiting your purchases to booksellers within your own country... Please be assured that this fee, called a Foreign Transaction Fee, International Transaction Fee, or similar, is not charged by AbeBooks."

During my previous Abe Books (Australia Account) and all O/S Purchases, my Bank Credit Card charged me, just under $2.00c (Australian Dollars) Transaction Fees per individual Abe Books Purchases, immediately following those Payments being completed.

The confusing mystery regarding Abe Books Australia Price Currency Conversion sudden incident where upon purchasing the AUD$ & NZ$ Seller Book Price is changed into USD $ Prices gives *Abe Books (& Jeff Bezos) Price MARKED-UPS Abe Books (Australia) Bill TOTAL: AUD $56.07c (USA $43.10c).

*Todays (2:45PM Friday 7 MAY 2021) Google Search Currency Conversion from AUD$ & NZ$ into USA$ Rates ~ Abe Books (& Jeff Bezos) are making $1.*******c per $1 Australian on the mark-up in Selling price to USA Dollars purchase Invoice to Abe Customers; and I would get a 21% Discount on the NZ Seller Book from Converting NZ$ to AUD$, but not so, as Abe Books instantly converted that NZ $ into the USA $ Exchange Rate. Abe Books CONVERT $ could be a higher rate in marking up to USA $ amount from the Google Search current detail.

'Abe Books' & 'AbeBooks Inquiry ARN - *******' & 'Ra'eesah L' & 'Abe Books Customer Service Care' are an "insult" to a now and once loyal consistent Abe Books Australia Account Customer.

I purchased a new copy of an expensive & relatively rare book from GoldBooks, a third party seller for AbeBooks, for $131.43. The first indication I had that something was wrong was when I realized I had never received the book, and when I checked the tracking number, it stated, that while a tracking number had been created, the book never made it to the post office. When I contacted GoldBooks, the owner, Alysia Farmer, told me that the book was lost in the mail, despite, as previously mentioned, the tracking number indicating that the book had never even made it to the post office. She said that she had sent me another new copy of the book.
In the meantime, GoldBooks had a new ad for the same new book I purchased, but now was selling the book for almost three times what I paid. I was immediately suspicious knowing that there weren't many new copies of this book around. Therefore, I wasn't surprised, when I received the book she finally sent, that not only was this book not new, it was a completely different book, a book that I hadn't purchased. It also wasn't nearly as expensive as the book I had purchased.
After many emails, Alysia finally admitted that she had my book, and would send it to me, but unsurprisingly, she has stopped responding to me, and AbeBooks has issued a refund.
I find it very disturbing that GoldBooks apparently defrauded me, and AbeBooks couldn't care less. I'm also concerned about whether I will ever actually receive the refund because AbeBooks will not give me a date as to when I will get the refund, and because many reviewers on this website have had difficulty receiving refunds.

They host bookjackers like GlassFrogBooks. 100 characters isn't enough to give details. Avoid them.

I have been using Abe Books for a bunch of years now. It was always the go to online database for used books at average pricing levels. The books weren't cheap either, but at least they were available from some still kicking bookstores across North America.

At least these bookstores were still able to sell their books, which were sitting on their shelves with no movement. Food stores have to throw their crap away - small bookstores can at least wait and hope for an order. I had thought that Abe Books was giving a second breath to old bookstores.

The books were often hard to get on other online book places - and most importantly, it wasn't the Amazon Monopoly Monster. By buying through Abe Books, I was also standing up against the Bezos' Mutation.

In the past, I would order books from them, but with at least each order, there was always at least one of the books that either never arrived, or the bookseller sent some flim flam copy of the book, or some other book scam. Yet, Abe Books would promptly get back to me and refund the book order completely to my bank-debit card account. This is why I would always return to Abe Books.

My last experience was not good at all however. I finally did receive a book that I had ordered - but it was after a month of waiting for it!

Abe Books did get back to me after I had complained to them about the bookseller sending me a bogus tracking number. The bookseller got scared and finally sent the book, after having ordering it two weeks ago.

But the problem was that Abe Book's customer service also stated that I could reject order if it did not arrive at the Estimated Delivery time and get a refund. The tracking link was definitely hard to decipher too.

I finally read that it was delivered to the destination. And this was true. But the long wait was horrifying. Imagine if I was a student who needed the book for a university class?

Here are the problems with Abe Books and the reasons why I am not going to use Abe Books' service anymore, even after years of good use.

First, like the reviewer wrote, "Make sure to pay attention,' many of the booksellers are disreputable sellers. Small bookstores, unfortunately, are often run by mentally disturbed characters. I have seen this throughout my travels and visits to small bookstores around the world. They can only relate to books and have become horrible misanthropes - and of course, bad Karma follows them continually through life. With Amazon totally killing the book selling market, these deranged individuals now hate on their customers - even through we are using Abe Books to avoid the Amazon Monopoly. This is the only reason I can fathom why any bookseller would not deliver a book, send a bad copy, or some flim flam summary of the book in a pamphlet, rather than the book itself.

These booksellers often have ratings that are not full five stars. There is no place on Abe Books to write bad ratings for them either, and Abe Books does not care about the bad ratings of booksellers. Abe Books will continue to use them. They only use booksellers that happen to have particular books in their dusty stocks, lying somewhere on a dirty shelf.

Yes, one has to read the bookseller reviews carefully - but to do this with every single order makes the experience of purchasing of just one book, another mode of suffering under the loaded gun of Capitalism. We just don't have the time to go through this rigamarole with every single order.

Also, keep in mind, Abe Books is now located in Victoria, British Colombia. The company runs on the commission scam like in South Asia and other money lender schemes, and just like Etsy and AirBNB.

The booksellers have to pay a sum to play. Abe Books' only concern is that it gets its commissions for every single order. Abe Books collects the profits, while the bookseller can finally unload a little of their book hoarding funk. This is late stage Capitalism folks.

Abe Books supplies the basic website, while the booksellers have to deal with their overstocks. Have you noticed that Abe Books searches often turn up the same books twice in a list? Have you also noticed that Abe Books has no customer service contact telephone number at all? This is only one step away from leading into corporate fraud.

Yes, I got my book finally. But I learned my lesson with them, and will not go through the suffering of waiting on a book for a month's time, and meanwhile, sending unanswered e-mails on an online comment form. No business is worth such suffering.

So what do we do about ordering books? Well, for those hard to find books, possibly out of print, we might have to bite the bullet and order from Amazon, or some other book service that specializes in out of print books. But beware... Just like Abe Books, read their online reviews first.

Most books are not in this order however. All public libraries now have access to the InterlIbrary Loan System. Now, any library user can order a book and read it for free. The reader can also extend the reading time of the book until it is finished. Having to buy an actual book and then let it sit on one's shelf to gather dust - never to be read again. Is this not the case with most of our books sitting on our shelves at home?

Finally, when looking up Abe Books on line, I was shocked to see that almost all of their reviews online were totally horrible. Many of the scammed victims were poor university students. This is very bad. With all of the suffering Abe Books has given out, there is no way I could use their service in good conscience. Lesson learned and I luckily dodged a bullet.

Last month I ordered four books; a nice good-looking box set of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. This site offered the cheapest price around, so long as I made an account. The arrival was supposed to be within 17-19 days. Around the 22nd day, still no books, so I sent in a ticket to the seller asking if there was a tracking number. Maybe the ETA was just off, y'know? But I don't get an answer from the seller, I get an answer from customer service. I wondered why I got CS and not the seller, so I look back to the seller's account... and it's been labeled a bot... My kinda luck, right?

So CS tells me they can reship or refund. I figured I'd give them a chance and asked for a reship. Was told it'll show up on my doorstep in 4-6 days.

Skip over Sunday and Memorial Day for obvious postal service reasons, I waited a few days extra just in case. I sent in another reply asking, "Hey, is there a tracking number this time around for this reshipment? The books still aren't here." The response I got? In a nutshell, the bozo goes: "The item you ordered SUDDENLY WENT OUT OF STOCK. It's available now. Would you like a reship or a refund?"... Why the [bleep] was it out of stock that quickly? Why was I not told it was out of stock? Why not send my money to one of the other listing sellers and ship it from them? I don't know how this is supposed to work out, but I AT LEAST should have been told it wasn't available. Unless each of these listed sellers are all bots too! I get it's a popular book series, but c'mon! "Suddenly out of stock"kiss the darkest part of my backside, buddy...

There's no Third Time's A Charm with me on this. I waited a month, I just want my books, and I'll be going to B&N for them. Might be a tad more expensive, just by a few dollars, but at least I know they'll get it here and it'll get here fast. I'd be surprised if I actually do get my refund, though. It'll be the only honest thing about this site. I'll be cancelling that account immediately afterwards in case they try nicking my card information.

UPDATE: There is a refund policy. It can only happen within 30 days of your purchase. When I got my second e-mail back from them, it was day 31, which I think was intentional on their part since my second e-mail to them was about day 28,29.

I ordered my fall 2017 semester book list from here, got 1 book out of 7. I placed my order on 8/4 chose 3-6 business days for all my books... I have yet to recieve any others.

It turns out that sellers have the option to market 3-6 business days then use cheap shipping options that take up to a month.

One particular seller wont look into the issue until the book hasnt arrived for 30days. This seller is Textbookrush, they took my money for faster shipping, then sent it packaged bound, then they sent me emails stating I needed to follow the tracking number. It took 7 emails and me getting quiet snarky to get them to state they wont do anything for 30days. I live in Michigan, they sent it out of ohio, there is no logical reason I shouldnt have this book by now, a full 22 days later.

The worst part is I spent 2hrs on the phone waiting through customer service holds at the USPS for them to tell me that they dont have a package associated with the tracking number, their system clearly shows that the slip was generated, but it never arrived at a facility to begin the official tracking process. Which means that textbookrush generated a slip, but from their on thwir end soley nothing more was done. Hey human error right? Heres the thing, Textbookrush REFUSES to do anything for 30 days, their website independently of abebooks states they wont return anything after 30days...

I dont really care at this point I am livid, but this is why I only online shop with my credit card, I can submit a claim on the 30th and they will get my money back for me, thats the beauty of discover.

However, I wouldnt reccomend using abebooks, they have not helped facilitate this concern at all. In fact because the company supplied a tracking number, they wont allow a refund to even start and requires me to do all the handling with the company, which is already NOT handling it in any intelligble way.

So this means that abebooks does not advocate for their customers like other warehouse or title sites do.

Maybe Amazon has spoiled me, but this is not acceptable to me at all. I wouldnt reccomend abebooks, and I would suggest everyone read the return and shipping policy for textbookrush, if you use their direct website, because they have things like a 151% restock fee, and insane shipping policies that only benefit their own screw ups and a complete lack of integrity in their customer service department.