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Abebooks
Category: Shopping Books, Mags, Music and Video Bookstores Bookstores [Edit]
655 Tyee RdVictoria, BC V9A 6X5
(250) 412-3200
- Price Range:
-
$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
4 reviews for Abebooks
4 reviews in English
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Review from Beth C.
Victoria, BC
1/10/2009
In a world that seems increasingly expensive and hectic, AbeBooks is a breath of relief for the booklover, student, teacher, researcher or...well, anybody who wants a book, ever.
Here's what I love about the internet.
Imagine walking into a bookstore, and immediately, loudly shouting "BRING ME EVERYTHING BY DAVID SEDARIS, EVERYTHING WITH THE WORD 'CUPID' IN THE TITLE, EVERYTHING SARAH VOWELL WROTE *EXCEPT* ASSASSINATION VACATION, AND IT HAS TO BE SIGNED, AND SOFTCOVER".
After shouting this at the top of your lungs, you clap your hands once to signal "go!", then sit down, whistle, pick at a hangnail, and look up 15 seconds later.
Imagine a handful of smiling staff, each with the exact books you'd asked for in their outstretched hands, and you can look at them, and summarily dismiss all the ones that aren't right, occasionally saying "wait! I'd like to have a closer look at that one."
THAT'S what the internet is like, and AbeBooks is the best of the bunch.
A local company, started right here in Victoria BC by a bookshop owner, her husband, and another couple they knew, AbeBooks has now been around for over a dozen years, and has branched out into new and used books, textbooks, rare, collectible and out of print books, and more. They are an international marketplace who treat their staff well and take their customers' care seriously.
In all my years using AbeBooks, there's only ever been one title I wanted and couldn't find there, a children's book that my mum had read me when I was little that I wanted to give her as a surprise one mother's day. I created a "want" on the AbeBooks system - basically left a flag for them to notify me if a book matching my description was added to their database - and lo and behold, eventually I got my book. My mum cried.
AbeBooks is an excellent company that does so many things right, and that hasn't gone unnoticed: they were recently purchased by Amazon. No matter how big AbeBooks gets, though, I have no doubt they will always be all about the customers, all about happy staff, all about creativity and accessibility, and most of all, all about the books.
Book Lovers rejoice, this way lies paradise. -
Review from Y Z.
Mississauga, ON
12/28/2011
Have you ever wanted a great online bookstore that you can easily and painlessly order from,
one that has phone staff you can contact should a problem or question arise that will handle
your calls with professionalism, maturity and a great customer service attitude?
THEN DON'T ORDER OR CALL ABE BOOKS!!!!!
Without word of exaggeration, it is the worst customer service possible.
Their phone staff have serious attitude problems and will not hesitate to be rude, sarcastic
or just plain ignorant in your face at any imagined excuse.
Don't bother to ask for the manager - dumb as a stick (so sorry to say) and
really could not have cared less.
I -
Review from Liz L.
2/24/2011
I've supported listing sites for small bookstores, such as this and Alibris, for many, many years, as a way to try to even the playing field with the huge booksellers. While my experiences with Abebooks in the past weren't perfect, they were average enough for me to continue ordering from small booksellers via their site when they had something I wanted or needed.
But I will not be ordering via their site ever again after my current experience.
I placed what was one of my most expensive book orders, as it included a couple of sets of uncommon books that both were expensive themselves and added to the shipping cost. I waited and waited for the order to come, and only after the post office stopped delivering on the very last day of the date window given for my box arriving, three weeks after I'd actually placed my order, did I try to contact the seller (as Abebooks suggests doing first).
Because the following Monday was a minor holiday, I waited until Wednesday after business hours to contact Abebooks directly, again going by the policy stated on their site (to contact them directly if the seller does not respond within 2 business days). Abebooks responded that my box had been delivered on Sat. morning three weeks prior according to tracking information they received by the postal service. They suggested contacting the bookseller (which I'd already told them in my first email that I'd done and had never received an answer) and the postal system (which past experience has taught me is a useless pursuit). I responded to their email, stating that no matter what the tracking information said, the fact that I had written asking where my box was showed that I had never actually received the box (why else would I be writing them?), and adding that the exact date and time provided by the tracking data means that I would have come home and found the box 30-60 minutes after it was supposedly delivered, leaving a potential box thief quite a narrow window of time in which to take a heavy box that, if they had looked at the shipping label when lifting it, they would have realized was almost surely full of books, not of something easily resalable like electronics.
Abebooks didn't respond to my reply. So I filed a dispute with my credit card company, and sent both them and the seller courtesy emails that I was doing so. Only then did I get a response - not yet from the bookseller (still), but a second one from Abebooks, that because the tracking information says my box was delivered, their policy is that they will not refund my money. I told them that because I had already filed the complaint prior to receiving their response, it would be up to them to sort it out with my credit card company. Never once did they say that they would contact the postal system or the unresponsive seller themselves. I am disgusted at the likelihood that I will have to pay over $300 for books I never received. -
Review from ANDREW N.
Victoria, BC
4/27/2009
Abebooks is not a bookstore per se but rather an Internet service that book stores (and some individuals with a large stock of books) lists books on. My rating is therefore based on my familiarity with them on that level. I'm aware of some service challenges, but they do make the HomeBase book listing software, which overall is a pretty decent program. If I were to rate it as a bookstore rather than as an Internet service, my rating would drop to 1: there are no books for sale at Abebooks themselves, and they do not stock the books that people order through their clients; they exist to faciliate other businesses' book-selling. There's nothing wrong with that, but tourists looking for bookstores shouldn't make a special trip there hoping to buy something.
