Reflections of a "Book Pirate"

Businesses with microscopic margins and high fraud losses (hello, eBay / Amazon Marketplace / etc vendors) sometimes get a little peevish about it. It is less commentary about you than commentary about the ten thieves they dealt with this week whose visible actions were indistinguishable from your own.<p>That said, I get to deal with the occasional "OK, now that our event is over I don't need this anymore, how do I get a refund" email. I eat all the costs on those and don't argue because there is no profit in arguing, but one can understand if I don't have those folks in my Favorite Customers Hall of Fame. You bought a book from a mom-and-pop business, got exactly what you were promised, and then -- because it was convenient -- reversed the transaction and stuck them with all costs. You're a textbook pathological customer. Do you understand why people might not want to work with you?<p>[Edit: Oh, the economics of the "dispose of it how you want" are fairly straightforward. It simply isn't worth restocking/shipping/admin overhead to take the item back. We had a similar canned line at the office supply store I worked at: if you complained your paper was "Made out of trees!!!" and that prevented you from using it, I would tell you to "Donate it to a local charity or otherwise dispose of it in any way convenient to you." Same thing with BCC disks: they're cheaper to print than to ship and if you hypothetically sent one back to the factory they would just destroy it and charge me for wasting their time.]

I think that the vendor should have kept his cool, but he was probably pissed that someone expected him to eat $8 worth of shipping to return a book he was only trying to get $6 from. What is especially frustrating is that the customer got exactly what they wanted, in the advertised condition, yet still returned it.<p>If this wasn't bad enough, the author also brings up the time that they asked for a refund from a 16 cent book.<p>I also try to save money however I can, but the person who wrote this article is exceptionally unreasonable.

Forget piracy, the blogger also had time to <i>read</i> the book and then try to sell it back - for full price. That is still, in the words of the seller "...taking advantage of the system… at my expense."<p>There is an issue (with Amazon) if there is no "Other" option for the reason of returning the book, but telling the seller "I no longer want/need this" book after (reasonably assumed to be) using the book for three weeks seems disingenuous at best. This implies that you did want the book at one time, you've gotten all the use you can out of it, and now you want a full refund.<p>Imagine if you go to the car dealership at the end of the life of your car and did the same thing...

Dude gets a book for free, vendor pays out-of-pocket to ship merchandise he oesn't get paid for, and vendor's reward is snarky comments on social media because he had the temerity to complain about the situation.<p>And the book ends up on the shelf next to some expensive new hardbacks. Gotta get that $6.16 back from the used sellers so it can be spent on the worst deal in publishing, meant for those buyers who don't mind spending money unneccessarily.

I remember selling some used textbooks on Amazon back in my student days, and for the ones that needed returning, I remember that having the buyer eat both send and return shipping charges STRONGLY deters frivolous returns.<p>"In cases where you are not responsible for the return, the return shipping costs should be borne by the buyer. Upon receipt, please issue a refund to the buyer. Learn how to Issue a Refund."<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=xm_1161246_cont_home?nodeId=1161246" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=xm_1...</a><p>Seems like the seller could have just asked the guy to send it back (at his own cost) before giving him a PARTIAL refund (book cost sans shipping fees) and just avoided this all. :)

What a peculiar incident. While its helped expand the inventory of Amazon considerably, it does seem that their storefront model ends up exposing consumers to thousands of potentially less than great sellers who, while they might do the right thing in the end, don't end up acting with the proper decorum that Amazon themselves would. Yet, I still "feel" like I am trusting them initially as I would trust Amazon. Yet, I don't know if I really should.<p>I'm shocked at the tone of the accusations, as they could have just said, "I'm sorry the book didn't work out for you, it will end up costing us more in shipping and reinventory costs than its worth, so you can just keep and it and have a refund". Yet for some reason, I'm not terribly surprised.<p>Perhaps they have them, but Amazon should perhaps have better guidelines for communicating with customers for 3rd party vendors?