I have Had It up to Here with Amazon.com

The BBQ Pit
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Last week I order two computer books after 6:00 PM on Wednesday night and got them on Friday. Not bad, not bad at all. On one occasion, a few months ago it took a three or four days to ship the order and it shipped from the Southwest, IIRC, so it took about two weeks to get my books since I live on the East coast.

I have no concert facts, just suspicions and guesses, but I think different warehouses carry different kinds of books or music. I usually only order fiction, literature, classical CDs, and computer books. It took two weeks when I ordered my one and only “religious” book. Not a whole lot of evidence, but there must have been some reason the shipment was sent from the Southwest warehouse instead of the regular East cost warehouse.

I ordered two fiction titles before 10:00 AM this morning. Let’s see how long it takes.

I don’t like to order from bn.com because the !@#$% charge me sales tax since Barnes and Noble has retail stores in Virginia.

I think the recommendations come from a simple database of what other customers buy. If customer A buys a book, Oracle 8i on Linux and Britney Spears new CD, Fellate and Swallow, then the Customer B who just orders the BS CD is going to get Oracle and Linux recommendations.

I get a lot of dumb ass recommendations, too. I wish there was an ignore category or genre option. I could then safely block bad teenybopper music, all movies, and Oprah’s picks.

There is one solution that kind of works for me. I disable cookies most of the time. Whenever I have to place an order, I turn the cookies on, place my order, then disable cookies and delete the content of my cookie folder. (I hate cookies and someday may rant about it.) This means that only the most generic recommendation appear on screen.

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I once ordered a book from barnesandnoble.com at around 2 in the morning, with regular UPS ground shipping, and it arrived that afternoon. That and Amazon’s bastardly commitment to selling my contact info to third-party marketing whores (as mentioned above by Fiver) are why I order stuff from Barnes and Noble.

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MissDavis –
I pay with a credit card and the money is exchanged automatically. Amazon.fr always lists two prices, Francs and Euros – a Euro’s worth about 90 cents right now (according to Xe Currency Converter - Live Exchange Rates Today ) so you can easily estimate from Euros to Dollars. I never pay for extra-spiffy shipping so it usually takes two or three weeks to get here but it’s always in good shape when it does. In fact, I’m expecting a package in the next few days that’ll include books from Baudelaire to a translation of Neuromancer. :slight_smile: It’s my third order and I’m very statisfied so far. Also, since my Amazon account was started on .fr, all packages I get from Amazon.com end in “Etats-Unis” even though they’re shipped from the US!

Another couple of alternatives to BN, amazon, etc:

https://secure.paperbackshop.co.uk/ for British books (I should get a British set of Harry Potter m’self …)

http://abebooks.com/ My favorite book site, which links used book stores all over the world with one search engine.