AbeBooksReviews 715

They must be too busy making commissions to really care about the customer. They assert no pressure or performance expectations on their sellers, except they have to respond to emails in 2 days. The book seller (Books Tell You Why - ABAA/ILAB) accepted an order on a book, then it never arrived after a month. Reason, you ask? "Bookseller accepted order in error
Comments: Our apology, this book was misplaced, the order was mishandled."
If I wouldn't have inquired, I would have never known there was a problem... not a way to do business. I can no longer trust Abe Books. They could have tried to find another copy and expedited shipping! At least they say they are giving me a refund, but Christmas is long past.

At present, abebooks is having difficulty policing its sellers. A central problem is that the abebooks.com website has no provision for feedback from buyers. Because unhappy buyers are silenced, prospective buyers can not tell good sellers from the unscrupulous. Based on the complaints here, as well as my own experience, sellers know that can provide less than satisfactory service, with no expectation of being policed by the abebooks people. It is somewhat shocking that abebooks states they are an amazon.com subsidiary, as Amazon tries much harder,

So, rhetorically, why not one star? The reason is that the abebooks phone service did initiate a refund promptly in my case.

My case: Placed an order, paying for expedited shipping. Seller waited ten days to ship, then purchased the cheapest shipping service available (media mail), not priority service, as promised. Book is not scheduled to arrive by promised date. Seller sent obviously false claims in email.

Overall, I'd say that abebooks is a service I would use, but not if I needed the book promptly. If I had, say, six or eight weeks before I needed the book, I'd try abebooks, then cancel the transaction if the associated seller failed to deliver, using another supplier.

Customer Service NIGHTMARE. I emailed your company seconds after a misinformed purchase was made on your site due to incorrect information in the ad for the book i ordered connected with this Order number AB-*******. I was not reached by email until 24 hours later, which is probably automated so they don't have to deal with cancelations. This site is ILLEGAL in the way it informs and deals intentionally denies your right to canceling a misrepresented product.

Until 24 hours after my emails alerting your company of the falsely
Represented book.

I've used Abebooks for several years and in the past have been satisfied with most of the transactions. Now however, Abebooks has a policy of allowing Sellers to disguise their location - for example, a seller may represent they are based in a United States city but in reality are an overseas company AND shipping FROM overseas to the United States. Abebooks allows a loophole for an overseas Seller to do this as long as they indicate somewhere in their listing that they "MAY" ship from some other location - even without full disclosure. This enables Sellers' deception of point of origin of your package. This directly impacts shipping time, increases the risk of damage and increases your financial privacy risks of dealing with a disguised, overseas Seller. I first contacted Abebooks about this policy, they determined the Seller "met their requirements" and took no action other than to tell me I could request a refund. I am very disappointed Abebooks is enabling this kind of Seller deception and encourage you to think twice before using this service.

Book says in stock, you pay, you get an email saying successful purchase and it will arrive in 4-6 business days. Then a month later still no book has arrived. You ask what is happening, answer given is "book got lost by the courier" and a refund is on the way and there is no more stock of this book. They never contact you to tell you there is a problem. You have to chase after them. After all of this I look at the website, says book is in stock! Avoid like the plague

If you get the book you ordered and it comes on time, then good for you; you are truly lucky! However, in the event you have ANY sort of problem with your order then good luck getting anything handled or fixed at all. I have been in the process of trying to return a book for a month and a half now, and it wasn't that I ordered the wrong book, what I received was not at all as described on the website. The individual seller that I have been trying to work with (Bookish) has absolutely WORTHLESS customer service, and AbeBooks has been no help in the issue either. Do yourself a favor and order your books from another website, the few dollars you may save by going through AbeBooks is not at all worth the stress and frustration of trying to deal with returns and customer service of this company.

I ordered my book for my microeconomics on September 11th. The estimated delivery date was the 25th, which at first I thought was pretty late delivery date, but I was willing to stick with it. It is now Oct 12th and I have already gotten the scores back from my first exam, and the book still has not arrived. I emailed them but they said they cannot do anything unless it is 25 days past the estimated delivery date, and that they don't have a tracking number for me! Stay Away!

Sometimes I received books on time, sometimes not and sometimes not at all! The times it worked was good but in the latest episode they took money from my debit card, claimed it was shipped from a supplier on August 23 to arrive about September 12. I contacted them a week ago and they didn't even acknowledge my request for more information. I searched for the Customer Service # and found it in the #2 font fine print. The guy I spoke to wasn't apologetic and neither was his e-mail. They told me too bad about your loss but NO REFUND, that's our policy because we aren't going to hold the carrier accountable on your behalf. LOUSY! I will not buy from them again.

If by chance you decided to look up the validity of these company before you buy GREAT FOR YOU. DO NOT buy from this company. I ordered an accounting book for over $200 as it was sold out at my school bookstore. I only had an option of renting from the school and the rental alone was $200 for a used book. I decided to give this pathetic source a try, and they shipped me an edition 3 back from the one I ordered. By this time I had waited and missed an assignment for a 7 week class and still had to purchase the original book. I returned my book to them and to this day still am out of $200+ dollars and cant get anyone on the phone. They are horrible with customer service and take 0 accountability for my misfortune. PLEASE do not order from them.

Purchased a book for school and waited for it while tracking the delivery. The book was ahead of schedule but later than the original tracking date since it kept getting stuck at each stop. The day of delivery it stated that it was delivered however just not to my address. I have checked with neighbors and the post office. The post office said only the shipper could inquire. However abebooks said since it says it was delivered then there is nothing further they would do. Don't buy from them!

Highly incorrect. False declaration. Order number: *******
Bought a book via AbeBooks website. Waited for the reply for more than a week. Then, when asked to AbeBooks, they siad that the book store: L Books (Montrouge, France), cancelled the order:
-without advising me
-leaving me for a week to wait for nothing
-And most of all they wrote on the reason of the remboursment that I renounce to the order, which is false and I can prove it.
Avoid totally

I needed to buy a textbook. I used Ables for the first time. On their website they do not say they only sell used books. I purchase a specific book they gave me an estimated date of 5 days from my purchase. It didn't arrive until 14 days after my purchase. Then I opened it up it's the wrong book. Not only is it the wrong book but Pages torn from it the book isn't even sellable. Trying to get this resolved is impossible. The only way to contact them is through email. They keep emailing me telling me they have a 30 day guarantee of return books and I keep emailing them back that I am not paying for shipping when you ship the wrong book. Don't ever ever ever buy from these people!