{"id":3829,"date":"2010-07-27T03:52:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=3829"},"modified":"2021-07-13T05:01:44","modified_gmt":"2021-07-13T12:01:44","slug":"book-disservice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=3829","title":{"rendered":"Book Dis·Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to discourage<\/em> my readers from doing business through AbeBooks.com<\/a>, which operates as a listing service of books for sale from a multitude of merchants.<\/p>

A friend recently ordered a book from one of these merchants through Abe<\/a>. The merchant responded by declaring that the book had been sold to another buyer, but then relisting the copy with other services<\/em>, at a higher price<\/em>. In other words, he or she, upon receiving an order, decided not only not<\/em> to honor the advertised price, but to lie<\/em> about the situation.<\/p>

My friend then contacted AbeBooks.com<\/a> to complain, explaining exactly what the seller had done. Abe<\/a> responded with irrelevant boiler-plate<\/em> about items that were no longer available. (The seller, for his or her part, responded with the irrelevant claim that he or she did not make money by hoarding<\/em> books.)<\/p>

When my friend again contacted Abe<\/a>, the response was to deny<\/em> that the book had been relisted. They repeated this denial to me. As my friend had made it explicit<\/em> that the relisting had been with an alternate service, and had offered evidence, Abe<\/a>'s response was at best with reckless disregard for the truth, if not simply a lie. In the wake of having it reïterated that the listing was with other service and that evidence can be provided, AbeBooks.com<\/a> has retreated into silence.<\/p>

As I told AbeBooks.com<\/a><\/p>

If you do not ensure honorable practice, then you are at best redundant amongst listing services.<\/blockquote>

So far, for example, my experiences with Alibris<\/a> have been fine, and there are other services as well. If one finds a book listed with AbeBooks.com<\/a>, there's a good chance that the very same seller lists the very same item through some other service as well. (I recommend using AddAll<\/a> at the outset of a book search.)<\/p>

Up-Date<\/span> (2010:07\/29):<\/span> Yester-day, Abe<\/a> broke their silence to declare that there was nothing that they could do about such a relisting. In fact, what they could have done is to de·list the seller. Evidently AbeBooks<\/a> is amongst those very many firms who treat it as an acceptable form of lying<\/em> to misrepresent a choice<\/em> as a necessity<\/em>.<\/p>

Abe<\/a> did offer my friend a coupon<\/em> for a 10% discount on a future order. My friend couldn't, with this coupon, secure a copy of the same book at the same net price as it had been listed — it's perhaps worth noting that the seller's price increase had been more than 99<\/em>%. And Abe<\/a> was simply tossing to my friend the same sort of promotional coupon that other buyers are given anyway.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I want to discourage my readers from doing business through AbeBooks.com, which operates as a listing service of books for sale from a multitude of merchants. A friend recently ordered a book from one of these merchants through Abe. The merchant responded by declaring that the book had been sold to another buyer, but then […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,4],"tags":[869,870,871,872,304,549],"class_list":["post-3829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-personal","category-public","tag-abebooks","tag-abebooks-com","tag-addall","tag-addall-com","tag-books","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11801,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3829\/revisions\/11801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}