::Miss Davis gesticulates wildly with hand WAAAYYYY over her head::
Up to Here! I fucking swear, these asswankers could not be more slow about getting my goddamn books in a box if they only employed salt addled slugs in their warehouses. I mean, Christ! Order date July 27, and still only one item shipped? Nothing had a “lead time” more than 24 hours! So a couple of weeks ago, I emailed asking what was the holdup, and apparently one book I wanted in paperback was “experiencing unexpectedly heavy demand” or some drivel. Okay. So I cancel that book and order the same in hardcover. Still nothing.
Then I decided to show my (ha ha) good will as a consumer (ha ha) by ordering my books for school from them instead of at the uni bookstore, which is crap and I’d rather give my business to the horny dog next door that humps my leg, but that’s another story. Anyway, ordered 8 nursing texts, totalling about 400 bucks. Lead time, 3 days max. That was 10 days ago. Have they shipped? Fuck no, I’d have done better having the horny dog next door hump my keyboard repeatedly in hopes of randomly generating some nursing related text. So I cancelled the two books that had the longer lead time and weren’t listed as “on hand” and ordered them from Barnes and Noble. They (BN) shipped my shit out the same fucking day. They rock my world, and you’re darn tootin’ I’m gonna buy from them all the time now, and send them a nice thank you email to boot. Amazon’s salt-addled slugs, on the other hand, put my order into “ready to ship” mode on Sunday, which means I can’t change or cancel it. Sunday, people! It’s Tuesday! Ship me my goddamn books already!!!
That’s too bad. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I’ve never had an Amazon order take more than a week to arrive in my mailbox. They’ve always been very fast (they don’t always ship the right item, but they’ve always shipped it quickly).
Amazon really bugs the crap out of me. And of course, whenever I say that, I instantly get surrounded by hordes of Amazon groupies who all want to testify their love of Amazon to me. Online shopping has become some kind of bizarre cult.
A while back I ordered a single Robertson Davies book for my dad and a James Bond book for a friend. Naturally, Amazon now thinks I am a rabid fan of both and constantly pelts me with news about them. I don’t like them. The thing is, I HAVE a wishlist there - you’d think the recommendations would be based off that!
I also wish they would lose the stupid pop-up window at their site. I go there, start typing in what I want, and suddenly I realize I’m not doing anything because a pop up window informing me of the latest Robertson Davies James Bond novel has stolen the focus.
I also hate their site layout. It’s intensely cluttered and noisy, the equivalent of walking onto a bookstore and not just seeing books advertised, but having people yell the titles of books in your face. And music. And movies. And toys. And clothes. And what’s worse is that so many online stores wish to emulate this clunky, cluttered design!
Nothing about Amazon has threatened my business at my local bookstore.
I had a problem where the same order was accidentally shipped twice to two different addresses. When second shipment was returned, they refunded the cost of the books, of course, but I was still hot under the collar and bitched about shipping costs. They said that they didn’t usually refund shipping when it was the customer’s error. I snarled that it was not my error, it was their stupid website that screwed up. They refunded the shipping without another peep.
I later figured exactly how I (yes, that’s me, the customer) had screwed up. Oops. I’m now a loyal Amazon customer purely out of guilt.
Well, that and I’ve never had any problems with them (that weren’t caused by me, I mean.)
My advice if you have trouble with Amazon is call. Even for the original web-savvy business, an email just doesn’t carry the same weight as a phone call.
Since the beginning of the Amazon.com flurry, I have refused to do any business with them. When I heard that they don’t even have any inventory until they get an order, I thought to myself “What bunk!” Add my vote for Barnes & Noble, I order stuff from them all the time and have always had excellent service.
It’s worth noting that http://www.borders.com is run by Amazon. I dunno if you’d have the same problems, but I went to the site a few days ago (as a loyal ex-Borders employee who has nevertheless never ordered from the website) and it looked just like the Amazon main site.
I haven’t had many problems with Amazon, but then again most of my orders are with Amazon.fr
Bn.com is the bomb, at least where I am on the East Coast. They ship out of NJ, so UPS Ground gets here overnight most of the time and in 2 days otherwise. Whereas Amazon ships from random somewhere, and it always takes 5 business days.
I had a similar nightmare with B&N, and vowed never to touch them again. (Ordered Christmas presents the day before Thanksgiving, all were “within 24 hours” books. Nothing. One book by New Years. I spent all of my breaks to Easter on the phone with them while they insisted that I shoudl just be patient. Refused to refund anything. Sent me someone else’s CD order. Got books around Easter. Never, ever, ever again. Not for love or money.)
I personally have never had a problem with amazon.com. I especially liked that I could go to their UK site and order for my friend across the pond a gift for her birthday.
I purchase books regularly as part of my job, and have found that although their service isn’t what it once was, Amazon is consistently superior to B&N. Maybe because I’m on the Left Coast transit times are quicker and communication is simpler.
Because, frankly, as hard as they try, there aren’t that many independent bookstores that have a selection anywhere nearly as deep as I want. I rarely browse for books, I look for a book.
I almost always know what book I am looking for and amazon provides the best and easiest route to keeping that book. If it is something I need right now I am going to go to Barnes & Noble or Borders because they are more likely to have it in the building than most of the local independents. There are a few good independents in Berkeley, but using them would require that I go to Berkeley, which always gives me a headache.
Now, if I’m just browsing then I’m all about the independent bookstores as their smaller selection means I can cover more ground.
There’s nothing magical about an independently owned bookstore. There competitive advantage is in the ability to fill a niche and know it well. Unfortunately, few independents do that well and are about as useful as a B. Dalton’s. Contrary to popular myth, the clerks in an independent aren’t generally more knowledgable, either. Though they do tend ot have more attitude.
I haven’t had a lot of problems with Amazon… except for their music recommendations. The system seems to have been set up by someone who has never heard of classical music and doesn’t understand why anybody might want to know about it - no matter how many Sibelius CDs they order. I would order, say, Sibelius’ complete tone poems, and ads for Dr. Dre, Eminem, Britney Spears, and (repeatedly!) a thing called Now That’s What I Call Music! 48, one of those top forty compilation things which is practically guaranteed, no matter what your musical taste, to contain at least one track that would make you want to gouge out your eardrums with an apple corer…
I sent a number of exasperated emails on the subject (extract: “How is it that some piece of software is saying, in effect, “Hey, this guy liked Sibelius’ tone poem Luonnatar, op. 70, he’ll really get a blast out of Alice Cooper singing Raped and Freezin’…”?”), but to no particular effect. However, I suppose it’s a quibble: generally, as I said, I haven’t had problems with Amazon.
I’m probably not used to much, or have just a very high annoyance treshold, but I never ran into any problems with Amazon. Far from it, all the (minor) issues I had with them were solved swiftly and without hesitation.
I live across the Atlantic and order quite frequently from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. My orders are almost always in within the week and rarely within two weeks. And that with regular mail service.
I once had a problem where I found that part of my order was missing. Without hesitation or questions they just shipped another copy. A friend of mine thought that an order hadn’t arrived. Amazon just sent a new copy of the book. A few days later he had located the first shipment and notified Amazon of it. They said that the second shipment was already underway and that it would be too costly to have it returned. They let him keep the book with their compliments, no extra costs.
Now that’s service. You won’t hear a bad word from me.
Dragonblink, I noted in your profile you live in LA, yes? Some questions for you about ordering from the .fr site: How do you pay? Does the cc thing automatically convert USD to francs or euros or whatever they’re using now? Does it take a long time to receive shipments? Are you satisfied? Details! I need details!
Scarlet67, it’s a lovely suggestion to support independent book sellers, and I would if there were one in my area. Here we have the uni bookstores which I addressed in the OP, a private-owned uni-geared book and orange-and-blue-themed-object store, a very tiny chain store in the mall (where I dread to go for anything, especially something I can do as well from home), a Books-A-Million that gets more of my business than I like to admit, and the odd Goodwill/ Salvation Army type outlet for used books (which also get a lot of my business).
UPDATE on my book situation: Got my two books from BN.com last night - no complaints yet. Amazon order - still not shipped. BN will be getting my business in the future, though I must admit I do like the cluttered Amazon site to a point - I guess it’s just what I’m used to. I like to look at the “people who bought this also bought” links, and often find things that would be of interest to me. And for some reason, I’m compelled to write reviews there, too. They have really built a sense of community, something I want to participate in. Scary.
Count me in among the folks who haven’t had Amazon troubles. I’ve never had a wrong item shipped, and if a shipment has been unusually delayed, it’s usually because I’ve tried to order an allegedly “out-of-print” title and chosen the ship-all-at-once option (and most of the time, they will ship a partial at no added cost).
I may have to try bn.com though, I am intrigued by the quick ship to the east coast idea. That may be my only gripe with Bezos and Co. It never fails, if it’s an item I really want now, it ships from Reno and takes over a week to get here. If it’s something I need at some point, but not necessarily now, it ship’s from Islip, NY and is there the next day.
I’ve had one bad experience with Amazon.com. I wanted a gift certificate mailed to my father for Father’s Day. (Hey, I like real mail and I figure other people do to.) It was supposed to have been shipped in 24 hours. A week and a half later, it hadn’t been sent. I sent an email asking where it was, got the form response and my father got the certificate three days later. They had shipped it the day after I complained. So my father’s gift was late. I felt terrible. Those jerks.
I’ve used both Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and had a few problems with both.
When Amazon.com made their “no respect for privacy” announcement last year, I switched exclusively to Barnes and Noble for domestic (US) purchases.
However, there are books I have to buy directly from the UK, like the Harry Potter books and Posy Simmonds’s books. I’ve reluctantly been using Amazon.co.uk for these; does anyone know of an alternative?
I frequently get stuff I order from Amazon a day or two after I place the order, even with standard shipping. That’s because they have a warehouse just across town.
Of course, that’s when I can’t find what I want at Joseph-Beth (the world’s finest indie bookstore), and get my friend who works there and has a 30% discount to buy it for me.
