As much as I prefer ordering books online for the price and convenience, the waiting time does bother me. It’s been taking longer and longer for shipments to be dispatched, which doesn’t coincide with the estimated delivery times listed on Book Depository. I find this rather problematic when it comes to pre-orders that I want to read before all the spoilers emerge. Though for the most part the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
Besides the shipping time, I’ve had two problems with Book Depository: (1) received wrong book, and (2) received damaged book. Both situations obviously didn’t please me but I think the customer service is generally helpful, so I will continue ordering from them in future.
Wrong Shipment
Problem
Recently I ordered the international paperback edition of P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han from Book Depository. Confusingly, I received the hardcover edition, which has a different ISBN. I made sure to check when I ordered, plus the hardcover is significantly more expensive than the paperback. The hardcover costs almost 40% more!
The reason I wanted this specific paperback edition was so that it would match my copy of the first book in the duology, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. I’m a stickler of matching formats, sizes and editions. That’s why I’m always very meticulous when checking the specifications of books I want to buy based on their ISBN.
Customer Service
When I received the hardcover in the mail last Friday, I immediately contacted customer service. Initially they insisted that I received the correct book but then I pointed out the ISBN differences. The next question was if I was happy with the hardcover and they offered a 10% refund. I pointed out that I ordered the paperback and that’s the edition that I wanted.
Well, someone else from customer service took over, apologised and explained the cataloguing mix-up. They promised me a full refund and said I could keep the book with their compliments.
Today I received an official email stating that my order has been cancelled and I will receive a refund.
Damaged Shipment
Problem
A couple of months ago I also received a damaged book from Book Depository. The Back cover was torn and folded. A bunch of pages were torn along the edges as well. The packaging itself though was in mint condition, which means that the book wasn’t damaged during transport. They sent me a damaged copy from their warehouse.
Customer Service
I took photos of the book and sent them to customer support. They were quick to reply, apologising for it. As compensation they sent me a new copy and I was free to keep the damaged copy. I didn’t need to send it back to them, which is good because I wouldn’t have been willing to pay the shipping cost.
General Thoughts
All in all, I think Book Depository’s customer service is satisfactory. It took a while to convince them that I received the wrong copy of P.S. I Still Love You but in the end they dealt with the problem as best as they could. Of course I’m still not happy about the mismatched duology but at the end of the day, I at least have a copy to read.
I like TBD because I can order books that aren’t available in South Africa, and the free shipping is awesome. But the shipping takes foreeeeever. Possibly because my country’s postal system is a disaster, so I can hardly blame it on TBD. So, long story short: I haven’t yet dealt with TBD’s customer service. But if my books don’t arrive soon, I might have to…
I also received a damaged copy from them once, the Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson. I took a few pictures and sent them over, they apologised and sent me a new copy, free of charge. All in all, I think their customer service is good!
I order books online all the time, because is so expensive to buy books in store in Australia AND the stock they have are usually just the most recent popular titles T.T
I once received a damaged book from TBD. I took pictures, and emailed them. They replied as if I had told them the book hadn’t arrived at all, and gave me timeframes for delivery. I replied saying that it HAD arrived, but that it was damaged. They sent out a new copy, and didn’t ask me to send the ripped one back. So even though it was a nit of a hassle getting them to understand what had happened, I was really pleased with the way they handled the situation.
Other than that one time, I’ve never had problems with ordering online – from any store. Things always arrive, and in pretty good condition, too!
Every time I look at the prices on the Kinokuniya AUS catalogue, my eyes bulge. There are so many added taxes that don’t apply to other countries =/
TBD’s customer support can be a bit slow in understanding a problem, that’s true. But once they do, they’re very quick to address it, so I’m not too bothered by it either.
My problem is that I have noticed the prices have gone up significantly since last year. I went on holidays for 2 months and when I got back, all the hardcovers had gone up to about $20(aus). I find this crazy as I used to only pay about $15 a hardcover. Has anyone else noticed the crazy prices lately?
Wow. That is quite a hike! Perhaps that happened due to fluctuating currency exchange rates?
I order from Barnes and Noble every once in a while, usually during August when I buy all of the books I need for the school year. I’ve gotten copies that were bent or torn before, and one time the Percy Jackson box set that my aunt bought me for Christmas had ink splatters. Instead of dealing with customer service emails, I decided to drive to my local B&N and ask for an exchange. With the box set, they didn’t have one in store, so the manager ordered a new set to be sent to my house, voided the shipping costs, AND gave me a 10% discount. Needless to say, I went home very happy that day.
I didn’t know that their brick & mortar stores are so seamlessly integrated with their online store! But that’s good to know and surely must’ve made it much easier to explain your situation. The added discount is beyond what I would’ve expected to make up for the damaged delivery. I would’ve gone home happy too :)
I’ve definitely had…mixed experiences. I won a book from DB and it just didn’t come and didn’t come and diiiiiidn’t coooome. And then the blogger I won it from contacted DB and THEY HAD LOST IT. So yeah. That was frustrating, but other than that I’ve had pretty positive experiences with DB! I tried ordering from a second hand website once, though (better world books) and omg, I do not recommend them. They completely false advertise about covers and they give NO warning on their site that they’ll send whatever cover they want (you can’t even order off ISBN number). I complained and they were totally like “We’ll refund you if you send the book back.” I’m in Australia. It would’ve taken me TWICE as much to send the book back. I ended up instagramming my disappointment and they decided to refund me. I feel so bad though, but good customer service is important. :( Still won’t ever be ordering from them again.
What does DB stand for? Heh. Sorry, couldn’t quite figure that one out. Well, armed with that knowledge, I wouldn’t order from BWB either. I’m so particular about editions, I’d be fuming mad if they didn’t comply, especially if they advertised one edition while delivering a completely different one. I know TBD sometimes lists different covers because some books with the same ISBN are reissued with cover changes that aren’t reflected. That’s something that TBD can’t 100% guarantee. But other than that, the information they list tend to be true.
I’ve never done Book Depository. I shamelessly buy all my books from Amazon because I haven’t had a problem yet. The only thing that has happened to me was that a pre-order wasn’t actually going to be available because they oversold it. But, I got my money back, so all ends well. Still haven’t bought the books yet though… I’m glad it pretty much worked out, other than the mismatched book. That is so odd, especially that it took some convincing that what you ordered wasn’t what you received.
Lol. I don’t think there should be any shame in ordering from particular sources. Buying books also makes us consumers, not just bibliophiles, and when we don’t have a large disposable income, obviously we would want to stretch our dollars. I’ve had 3 recent orders cancelled by Amazon too due to unavailability. I suppose this happened because I picked the UK editions. In future I think I will place my UK-edition pre-orders with TBD, even if that means paying a couple of extra dollars. At least I know those books will reach me. Well, there was a system error, so maybe that’s why customer support couldn’t recognize the problem until I explained all the details.
I’m so glad both situations worked out for you in the end! Just hearing about that makes me more confident in ordering from Book Depository in the future, whenever that may be.
I usually order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble online, and I haven’t had too many problems with them. Some have been a bit squished on the corners, but nothing horrible enough for me to need to return them. There was one time that a package went missing entirely, but they refunded me within a few days!
TBD is definitely a useful place to turn to if you’re looking for a particular edition that you can’t seem to find locally. I’m sad to hear about your missing parcel but it’s good to know that they covered the loss.
I’ve never purchased a book from TBD, but I know I’ve considered it before. I do purchase a lot of my books online these days though, which may seem weird since I work at a bookstore. It’s just generally cheaper even with my employee discount. I haven’t yet needed to contact customer service about it, but it seems TBD is satisfactory. Although it may take them a while to figure out that they actually did make a mistake, it does seem that they do what they can to resolve the issue, which is good.
Lovely discussion!
The other good thing about Book Depository is that they tend to have UK, US and international editions of the same titles. That’s usually not possible for local bookstores, depending on space and territory rights. But yeah, TBD’s customer support usually responds very quickly to sort things out.
I haven’t had any bad customer service experience before (yay!) but I’m glad TBD was kind and understanding. It makes me nuts when I see a book arrive and the book cover is damaged or like the paper inside is torn or folded.
That’s great! As long as the customer service is good, I’m happy to order online.
I have noticed that the service TBD offers has been getting worse and worse. Books are taking WAY longer to dispatch and then take over a week to get to me which is drastically different than when I started using it. The prices are a lot cheaper, though, and I can’t use The Book Outlet so I have to say that I will keep on using their site.
Most of the time TBD really does have cheaper prices, so I’m sucking up the delays in shipping. Though I do always compare the prices with Amazon and local bookstores before deciding if I should place my order. If the prices are the same, I buy locally, or I go with Amazon because their shipping has been much quicker lately.
I’ve ordered a bunch of books from TBD. Never really had problems.
Once I ordered them, the time passed and I still hadn’t received them, but then I found out that I was looking for them in the wrong place (at the time I lived in uni dorms and the mailman leaves them usually in one place, but at that time it was left in a different place, where I typically don’t check), so the books actually arrived, like, in just a couple of days, but I was looking for them in the wrong place :D After that I’ve never received the books so fast (except for the week or two that I was looking for them in the wrong place).
I once pre-ordered with them. No problems. Received my Cat&Bones book wither at the release day or even a day before, I don’t remember. Therefore, as far as my experience shows, pre-ordering with them is okay.
And once I had to contact Customer Support because I needed to change the shipping address to my home and not the dorms and everything went smooth.
Never had much of a problem with the looks of received books (haha, rhymes). Yes, the Throne of Glass I received in May had a slight umm incision on the lower part of the cover and into the first pages of the book, but I honestly didn’t feel disturbed by it. Though the delivery time definitely was more than 8 business days. Sometimes I think it’s because they send the books in some weird way, because at least twice I’ve noticed that they have been in a totally different country. That is, their destination for me is Latvia, where I live, but for some reason, before that, on their way here, they have also been in Prague, Czech Republic (judging from the Prague mail stamp on the package). Maybe that’s how mail works, but to me it just feels like a weird “pit-stop” as it’s not in a direct way from UK (from where they supposedly ship) to Latvia. But I’m no mail expert :D
Ah, yes. Uni dorms. Hahaha. I was too afraid of such mix-ups, so I rarely ordered using my uni address. And yeah, shipping from TBD was so much quicker two years ago. Thankfully none of my orders have ended up in the wrong country yet, though it has happened for letters that I received from my friends.
The funniest in the fact that the book visits some other random country is that I have no idea if it’s supposed to be so or not. I’m no mail expert so maybe shipping through a country that’s kinda ouy of the way is normal/typical/better/etc, but it seems weird. But I know nothing about that, therefore I’m not really complaining. As long as I get the book in the end, it’s ok.
I’ve ordered quite a few times from The Book Depository and so far I haven’t had to contact their customer service. I’ve received hardbacks with dents in them but nothing problematic. I mean I don’t really care if there is a dent in the hardcover as long as the dust-jacket is fine. It happens. If I buy the book in the bookstore there’s a 50% chance that it’s in a worse state than if I buy it online.
Their shipping is indeed very very long. They say on the website that it takes 4 to 8 business days to ship to Europe but takes longer than that. I’m not the kind of person to go point this out and demand a refund or whatever because it didn’t arrive after 8 business days. They’ve always arrived in the end and in a decent condition so I’m not complaining. I’ve never (and probably never will) pre-ordered there though, because what’s the point of pre-ordering if it only arrives 2 to 3 weeks after the release date?
I sometimes order books from a webshop located in The Netherlands because they get here faster. I always pre-order there because the book arrives the day after the release date (or 2 to 3 days after TOPS). The only reason why I keep going back to TBD is because the other website is more expensive and you have to pay for shipping. If they had the same prices and free shipping, I think I would only buy there and leave TBD behind.
Yeah, a few nicks here and there can’t entirely be prevented while shipping. But when I’m at a bookstore and get to pick my own book, I tend to go through the entire stacks to look for a copy in the most perfect condition. Lol. I’ve considered local online options but their shipping times aren’t much better than TBD and sometimes their prices equal the local bookstores, so I rather pop by the bookstore if I want to read a book immediately.
I buy most of my new books through small local bookstores, I want to support them and the easiest way to do so is to order books. I appreciate the service I get from the small stores, if there is an issue they call me and that way problems are easily solved.
I used sites like TBD in the past but any longer, small local bookstores make my book shopping experience more personal and I like it.
Happy Reading!
I’m happy to hear you have such a great relationship with you local bookstores! :) Sadly this personal relation doesn’t translate as well into bigger bookstore chains.