AwesomeBooksReviews 54

HORRIBLE company. Ordered books on July 15 with a delivery date by Aug 26. Need these books for University + a limited budget = reluctantly accepted the very long shipping time. For over a month my order has been labeled 'shipped'. Aug 21 no books and was getting worried with Uni 10 days away. I sent the company an email asking for an update (no tracking number was ever given). 1 day later I get an email from amazon - not the company, amazon - telling me the books were out of stock and issued me a refund! WTF! In over a month they NEVER said a word about being out of stock. Issue a refund with no accountability. Now I must wait 5-10 days for the refund AND put out more money for these books, if I am lucky enough to find them.
FU awesomebookscanada!

I can't believe the previous comments are about the Awesome Books I deal with in the UK, as they are tremendous. I have bought books, usually 8 to 12 at a time for over four years and never had a problem. One time they sent a wrong book and gave me a credit and told me to keep the book.
I can't wait for them to start shipping to Canada again... they stopped because of our mail problems... I really miss them and hope things are resolved soon.
I will copy this to Canada Post, not that it will do any good, I'm afraid.

I live in Canada. I had ordered a hardback book from these people via abebooks and it was in the advertised condition at a good price. I went to order again a few months later and found that the shipping cost had gone from around $5US to $45US! I assumed this was an error, emailed them, and received an email saying they were aware of the problem and had passed it on to the appropriate people to fix.

A couple of days later, I found their website and discovered they weren't shipping AT ALL to Canada due to the rotating postal strikes. Obviously they had raised the shipping to deter people from ordering, but didn't want to give me a straight answer.

Within a couple of weeks, the strikes were over, mail was back to normal, but their site still said they weren't shipping to Canada due to the strikes. I emailed them about this, pointing out that Canada Post's official web site said that everything was back to normal, and they said they were waiting for notification from Canada Post! Why they think (or claim to think) that Canada Post would notify everyone in the UK individually about the termination of the strikes just boggles the mind.

Conclusion: they are either incredibly stupid, or quite dishonest. I certainly will never deal with them again.

Whilst clearing my mother's house we found a lot of Gardeners Chronicle magazines in wire binders dating from the 1960's. An internet search found Awsome Books were selling copies of this magazine so I phoned them to ask advice on how to dispose of them in some USEFUL way - when I got past the robot answering service I asked if they had any interest in the books "WE DONT BUY FROM CUSTOMERS" - can you advise me how to dispose of these magazines "WE DONT BUY FOM CUSTOMERS" - i dont want to just throw them away they must be of interest to someone? "WE DONT BUY FROM CUSTOMERS - YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU LIKE WITH THEM" - Goodbye

I ordered 4 books from this company, and they confirmed my order via AbeBooks. I later got 3 emails saying that "due to a listing error, your book order was wrongly displayed as being available in our inventory. We have since searched extensively through our databases and stock to see if we can find a copy of the ordered title. Unfortunately, a copy has not been found."

I guess such things can happen occasionally; but to happen to 3 out of the 4 books I ordered, and then to send automated emails (in the middle of the night) saying the above, seems to indicate that this isn't a one-off but a regular problem. In fact, even after telling me they had no copies, they still state on their AbeBooks listing that they have in stock 9 (yes, 9) copies of one of the books I wanted, and 4 copies of another.

I contacted them; they refused to say why this had happened (or to deny that the false listings are deliberate), just said there was a glitch and it's being sorted. Ten days later, the listings are still there!

Seems to me that either (a) their inventory and/or listing systems are badly broken; or (b) they deliberately list books they don't have to attract orders. I've asked them to explain which but they just say "technical glitch". Either way, I now don't trust their listings and will avoid them in future.

Awesome? Not!

I ordered a second hand book I was convinced was a hard copy. I was particularly looking for a hard copy so I was paying attention to details and images. I'm sure I did not buy a book without either image or details corresponding to hard copy. The book was priced at hard copy levels. When I received the book it was a paperback edition I did not recognise. The package contained no return address details or invoice. A pencilled price inside the book was about a 10th of what I'd paid for it (including postage). The company did inform me how and where to return the book when I emailed them but they were not prepared to refund the postage. I decided to keep the book as it was out of print but I also found a hard copy with dust jacked in good condition from another bookseller which cost me a quarter of what I'd paid this company for what turned out to be a paperback. This review relates to the UK Division only. I've no experience of the US Division.

I recently purchased a book from this seller (UK branch), the second item I have purchased from them. Having been impressed with the condition of the first item, which matched the description (i. E. very good condition, no damage to covers, etc.), I decided to make a second purchase from this seller. It turned out to be a bad idea. Although this second book had a description identical to the first one, it was not at all in the condition promised. I have initiated a refund process, and just sent the book back, but when all the math is done I end up having paid USD 18.00 for nothing, because the return postage was considerably more than what the book + postage cost me in the first place. While my postal service bears some responsibility for this, given their ludicrous international postage prices, none of this would have come about if the book had been in the condition promised in the first place. After checking the listings of this seller again, I noticed that many of their items are described as being in very good condition, etc. Indeed, the descriptions appear to be identical in many cases, which suggests that the company simply assigns an item to a particular category and it receives the corresponding description, rather than a unique description pertaining solely to that item. That said, I don't know how this item ended up in the "Very Good" category; furthermore, if it was damaged in transit, that simply goes to show that for long-distance postage it might be better to package items in something more sturdy than a plastic mail bag.

So, I warn potential customers to take the descriptions with a grain of salt, and be prepared to accept an inferior item, since the cost of returning it may put you in my situation of paying for nothing. Of course, I should have just kept the item and cut my losses; but I had forgotten how much I paid for it and thought I would break even or close to it. It's also simply annoying to have been subject to false advertising, but I guess all of this comes with the territory of international internet shopping of this kind.

This is a review of their UK division. I have no experience with their US division. The company has fallen off a cliff in the past year. They now charge for shipping outside the UK (previously, shipping for 2 or more books was free). Despite charging for shipping, they have switched from using cardboard mailers to flimsy envelopes. My recent order was shipped in three envelopes. Two of them fell apart in transit. As a result, one book didn't arrive, and the remaining books were all damaged. Customer service told me I would have to return all the books, including the one that didn't arrive, at my own expense, to receive a partial credit to be used on a future order.

I have to say this is one clear case of cheap prices not indicating quality.
Customer service is generally poor - polite but hardly effective. I've found myself repeating questions/concerns on many occasions. I've also had staff border rude/condescending.
Book quality ranges from fine to books that can be damaged/not as described or not arriving at all...
It really is a gamble & that said, safer options lie in more established sites...
They're pretty much all for show & deep down lack genuine human respect, honesty & the ability to value customers.
Buy elsewhere if you don't want inconsistency... it's not worth the risk