Traditionally I have always purchased from Amazon (or the local Borders.)
But I got a B&N gift card for Xmas and so I went online and ordered. Much to my surprise it shipped the next day. Although Amazon *claims *that they usually ship in 24 hours they rarely do (at least for me.) What’s more, shipping was free. Amazon offers the free shipping thing, but then they delay shipping for weeks.
Tonight I took part in the after Xmas sale at B&N. Free shipping, low low prices and the just notified me that they have already shceduled shipping. It was scheduled withing an hour of placing the order. Heck, they have my business for future books!
hm…wish this thread would have started about a week ago. i coulda bought my schoolbooks then. i hadn’t thought of barnes and noble online…do they do used books too? if so, then i’ve got some comparison shopping to do, if i ever need books again.
I got gift certificates for Christmas for both Amazon.com and BN.com. I definitely prefer Amazon.com. (Although I’d really prefer to have a B&N here in town so I could physically look through a book before deciding to buy it.)
Amazon appears to have a much wider variety of books. It’s possible it just seems that way because they were easier for me to browse. I don’t know if it’s the way they categorize them, or the search engine they use, or what. Also, Amazon sells a whole heap of non-book stuff.
BN.com gave me several problems. For one thing, it doesn’t allow you to use more than one gift card per order. I had two - one for Christmas, one for my birthday. So I had to make two separate orders. Grr.
Then, inexplicably, my “shopping cart” emptied itself after I’d typed in my username / password in order to check out. BN.com doesn’t have a “recently viewed” thing like Amazon.com does, so I had to find the books again and add them to the cart again. Grr.
Finally, BN.com is giving me conflicting information. According to an email that I recieved just today, part of my order is experiencing unexpected delays and won’t be shipped for another day or two. Except, according to their website it had already shipped. I don’t know which to believe.
(P.S. If anyone is interested in some really good, cheap books, check out Dover Publications. They don’t have nearly the selection of Amazon or B&N, but they have some stuff that’s difficult to find elsewhere.)
I used to swear by Amazon but over the last 6 months I’ve noticed virtually every order I place takes several days to even longer to actually get to me than they promise.
Before that I used to almost always get my Amazon orders to me with incredibly speed, shipped within the next 1-2 days and arriving 2-3 days after that.
I live in Brazil… so my experience might not be that relevant… I order only Amazon and I agree that its taking longer to ship than before. I am getting the books faster though once they do ship.
When Amazon.com started offering Prime, and I didn’t purchase the service, my books started taking a week + to arrive. When I order from bn.com, my books take two days.
In my very limited experience, B&N’s free (for > $25 orders) shipping has always been fairly fast; Amazon’s has been anywhere from very fast to very, very slow.
However, Amazon seems to have a significantly wider selection than B&N, and Amazon’s prices on non-book items (CDs, DVDs, etc.) are sometimes much better than B&N’s. Plus if you’re willing to buy used (or if you have to, because what you want is out of print), Amazon shows you how much that’ll cost right on the main product page and makes buying used copies easy.
Now I’ve always found BN.com to be much more expensive than Amazon/Borders. Most books on Amazon/Borders are marked down 30%, as opposed to non-sale BN.com items, which are always at cover price. To me, there is no contest, and no need to ever buy a book from a brick-and-mortar store as long as I can wait a few days to get it in the mail. For me, cheaper = better, and Amazon/Borders seems across-the-board cheaper. Amazon also offers used items through the Marketplace, which can end up being even cheaper than their regular discounted prices, and of course the wide selection of CDs and DVDs.
Ive ordered new books from Amazon and BN, and have found my BN experiences much better. Amazon sends the new book… eventually. I ordered a book for school a week and a half ago, and my dad called this morning to tell me that it finally arrived. (so I can’t even get it till saturday) The books I bought from BN arrived two days after I ordered them. If I had known that Amazon had such a horrible shipping time, I would have ordered that particular book from BN and ate the $5 difference. Now I have to play catch-up in my honors history course, which is going to suck.
Otherwise, I usually only order from BN, simply because I have the discount card, and usually have gift cards. They used to allow more than one gift card to be used per order, which was very very nice when I had three or four cards to splurge with.
Being the miser that I am, I always go with Amazon. As previously noted, their prices are almost always better (especially on DVDs), and tax-free as I no longer live in Washington. I’ve never had a problem with their service in any way, but then I’m rarely in that big a hurry to receive my order and wouldn’t notice slow shipping unless it’s really slow.
I used to say the same thing - but I have had things that took 5, 6 even more than 8 weeks to ship. I usually don’t mind 3 weeks, but when we are up near two months, I just won’t do it.
I have noticed anytime I use Amazon’s faster shipping methods the stuff really does get there as fast as advertised. But typically I’m ordering fiction or history books from Amazon so there’s typically not any great rush. One time I was in the middle of a series though, and couldn’t find book four anywhere in the physical stores in my area so I ordered it from Amazon.com with fastest available shipping. The shipping cost was 2x as much as the book itself, but it was worth it to not have to wait a week to finish the tetralogy up.
I’ve had good experiences with Barnes and Noble – prompt shipping, anyway. I won’t use Amazon because a few years ago they issued a statement saying that, if they gained any personal information about me through my doing business with them, they’d consider that information to be their property, to use or sell as they choose without regard for my privacy. So they don’t get my money.