Better World Books

There online site is a scam! I found a book at a reasonable cost. A little higher then Amazon but I believed in the cause. When I went to buy the book they say Oh No! Someone else just bought this book. We still have a similar book at double the cost. Ok no big deal but when I get on three days later it says the same thing!!! This is a classic bait and switch! Steer clear!

Purchased a text book and paid for express shipping. Book is still not here and it has been over a week. I was told my card was refunded, but that hasn’t happened either. I wouldn’t recommend this vendor at all.

Used to be 5 stars and now buying books online is terrible! Orders take 4 – 7 days to ship out andf then in order to look at a status on their website, you have to put in your order number. This is the 2^nd time now that I did not receive the order number email and I thought that maybe adding them to my address book would resolve the problem. Even then, you have to put in an order number, the zip to where the books were sent and your email only to see «shipped» or not shipped and NO TRACKING! Then, you have to email them which the send partial info. to you relatively quickly. What good is it if you are still left with questions and when you call, a person never answer. Even in the call back they do not tell you what I have mentioned above. Two years ago it was not like this. What is going on there guys? FREE SHIPPING IS INEXCUSABLY POOR.

This company used to be EXCELLENT, now it’s hardly worth consideration.
I used to love the customer service and the excellent books I got. The bargain bin was an extremely easy way to get some good books. Most of the time, I was never disappointed. And if I was, customer service did EVERYTHING to make it right.
But now, the customer service is terrible. The responses seem to be automated and the people are extremely unhelpful. For example, if you get a book from the bargain bin, they often say they are out of it. Then you see a more expensive listing of the book, at an exorbitant price! Prior to me contacting them, they did not even issue a refund! They just didn’t include the book and hoped I wouldn’t catch it I guess…
When I asked if I could receive a similar copy that wasn’t much more expensive, they refused. The customer service associate didn’t help me at all and didn’t escalate my complaint to management. There’s no way to contact upper management through the online help page. Guess I’m up a creek without a paddle.
Over the years, I bought a couple hundred books from them! Now there is no way I’ll be a repeat customer! Their service has taken a plunge for the worst and I’m not going to buy from them again :(

Their online store told me they had 2 copies of an academic treatise for 99 cents each. I bought one of them and they took my money. The next day they cancelled my order, saying both copies had been sold. They told me that their business operates at the speed of light, so of course they cannot keep their listings updated. The truth? What do you want to bet they said, «OMG, why was this book NOT MARKED UP? You have to cancel it!» And sure enough, now there are copies available for $ 52. Their responses to me have been arrogant and self-​serving. This isn’t a «charity.» It’s a poorly run money-​grubbing operation.

I have had 3 consecutive awful experiences with Better World Books and I will never again do business with this company. All 3 incidents involved online purchases. I have never been to the actual store.
The first 2 incidents were due to unacceptably slow shipping of orders. I waited over a month to receive a book on both occasions. That is completely unacceptable this day in age when you can ship from any point in the country to another in 3 – 4 days.
The 3^rd incident was the straw that broke the camels back. I received a used book with 225 pages missing and another 30+ pages that were unbound and falling out. This book was listed as in «Good» condition on their site. Needless to say that was completely unacceptable, irresponsible and unprofessional.
It has become abundantly clear to me that the folks at Better World Books do not take their business very seriously. To sell someone a book that is missing ¹⁄₃ of it’s total pages means that they take no heed whatsoever in the quality of the products that they sell. To make a customer wait over a month to receive a shipment that could easily be delivered in 3 days means they care absolutely nothing for customer satisfaction or repeat business. To do it twice means they are completely incompetent.
There are hundreds of used book sellers online and used book stores… you would be best served to bring your business elsewhere.
In the spirit of giving credit where credit is due I will admit that I was refunded for the book with the missing pages. I would however have preferred to read the end of the story than to receive my $ 5 back.
The moral of the story is… BUY YOUR BOOKS ELSEWHERE. You have been warned!

I really dislike the business model of selling books people throw out for profit. They ask you to «donate» books which sounds like you’re doing a nice thing but there’s no point to it. What about the world of regular used book stores?

Goshen is lucky to have such an amazing bookstore in our town. They carry a wide selection of books and games and can special order nearly any book at the best price. The staff is friendly and helpful. When visiting Goshen make sure to stop in!

Be careful about ordering eDelivery.
I’d been a loyal customer for years and ordered more than 700 books from the company over the years (don’t judge, okay, fine, judge a little), even when a title I wanted was a bit cheaper elsewhere. Why? Because I believed in its mission and in its honesty.
I recently tried ordering some books by eDelivery. For books that they select, they scan the book and send the file, recycling the original book. (They recycle the book immediately after scanning so I couldn’t just ask for a refund on the scanned version and to be sent the print one. I thought that «immediate» was a bit hasty in case there are scanning errors but figured it was for legal compliance. Now I wonder if it’s to enforce their «no returns» policy for scanned books.)
The information and FAQ about eDelivery don’t mention anything about scanning only in black and white. So when I ordered books with color illustrations, including ones where the color conveys a great deal of the meaning, I assumed that they would be color scanned. After all, since they select the books to be scanned, they’d recognize that a book in color has more value as a color book.
Nope. Black and white and rather fuzzy.
So paying the extra $.99 for eDelivery means that I paid more to get something worth less.
I emailed support about this, asking solely that it add the info about scanning color-​illustrated books only in black and white to its FAQ and info about eDelivery so that other customers wouldn’t have the same experience.
No response. If they’d emailed back and said «oops, never thought of that, we’ll post that info» it’d be one thing. But nope, not even that.
So color me disappointed and a former customer.

A vibrant town needs a first rate book store. BWB is a highlight for all my children. With a coffee shop in house, Saturday mornings for playing games and picking out new reading books is a highlight. Staff are very friendly and knowledgeable.

I live in Elkhart, which is a good 25 – 30 minutes away from Goshen. But I go out of my way to buy my books here, because they go out of theirs to get me the books I’m looking for at the best possible price. I like that they can get me used copies for super cheap, and I never have to wait more than a day or two for a special order. Everyone that works here is always friendly and helpful and they remember your name. Brad runs an awesome store with a lot of heart. Skip the Borders or Barnes and Noble and support local business!