BOTTOM LINE NEVER BUY FROM ABE BOOKS THEY ARE A SCAM!

Desc: Ordered a book using a coupon for 10% off up to $10 on the last day (6/17/2008) for a text book I need this coming 08FA semes­ter. I received the normal con­fir­ma­tion email.

6/18/2008 I get an email that the order is can­celed due to my credit card being declined. There was no attempt at con­tact­ing me to resolve the issue.

Dear Sonny T Hung,

We’re sorry to let you know that we weren’t able to charge your credit card for the book(s) listed below.

There are a few pos­si­ble rea­sons why your card might have been declined; our credit card pro­cess­ing ser­vice does not spec­ify the cause. We rec­om­mend vis­it­ing your Abe­Books account to review your credit card details. If this infor­ma­tion is cor­rect and up-​to-​date, your credit card com­pany may be able to pro­vide fur­ther details regard­ing this transaction.

To review or edit the credit card infor­ma­tion we have on file for you, please click the fol­low­ing link: http://​www.​abe​books.​com/​s​e​r​v​l​e​t​/​C​C​M​a​n​a​g​e​m​entPL

Again, we’re very sorry for any incon­ve­nience. The book(s) will be restored to our inven­tory shortly; we do hope you’ll place your order again.

I con­tacted them through their web­site and get the fol­low­ing response.

Hello Sonny,

Thank you for con­tact­ing Abe­Books Cus­tomer sup­port. I’m sorry to hear that your credit card was declined for this order. When your order was placed, an email noti­fi­ca­tion went to the book­seller allow­ing them 4 days to process the order before it expired. When the book­seller went to con­firm and ship the order, indi­cat­ing ‘Will Ship’, Abe­Books at this time attempted to process your credit card on June 18th. As your card at this time was declined, we sent you an email noti­fi­ca­tion indi­cat­ing this had hap­pened and you can see this email within your account.

Unfor­tu­nately, I cannot apply this dis­count to your declined order as it is no longer active and because the coupon has unfor­tu­nately expired. I’m really sorry that this is the case and can let you know that you will be eli­gi­ble for coupon pro­mo­tions in the future.

Sincerely,

Megan H
Abe­Books Cus­tomer Sup­port
Abe​Books.com Pas­sion for books.

Basi­cally they don’t give a hoot - Too bad your out of luck.
No clar­i­fi­ca­tion what the exact issue was other than the order was declined because the charge cold not be processed. Of course I used that card that same day. Hm….. I wonder if some­one screwed up on their end huh?

Enough said - Basi­cally DO NOT order any­thing impor­tant through them. There is NO REAL CUS­TOMER CARE. Just a, ’ Sorry, you can try again next time’. you are so SOL (So Out of Luck!)

BBB of Van­cou­ver Island

220-1175 Cook Street

Vic­to­ria, BC V8V 4A1
Canada

Abe books appears to be known to that orga­ni­za­tion as abe​books.com.

Include your own name, address, and phone number, and names and dates as well as any­thing in writing.

They have a number of a vari­ety of sorts of com­plaints about Abe Books. In their own judge­ment they don’t have a greater number of com­plaints than normal for a busi­ness of “that sort”. In other words, what’s needed is for them to get more compaints.

Also, when people com­plain about orders not received, the com­plaints are appar­ently resolved - though it does not say how.

I sent my com­plaint, even though it con­cerns new mean­ing to poor cus­tomer ser­vice rather than a com­plaint. It sort of looks like they may actu­ally handle such com­plaints, but anyhow, since this company’s han­dling of any matter at all fol­lows the same pat­tern, I reported my expe­ri­ence so that they can see the pattern.

They did not try again. They didn’t wait a bit and try again. They can­celled my order and let me know they couldn’t process my credit card. They said to noti­fiy them if the bank said there wasn’t a prob­lem with my account so they could process the order.

I spent two hours trying unsuc­cess­fully to check my bank account. I for­warded my noti­fi­ca­tion from them to work. After teh bank told me noth­ing what­ever is wrong with my account, I e-mailed them from work, enclos­ing the entire e-mail they sent me with the e-mail address and the order number, and putting their own sub­ject line with the order number in the sub­ject line. I got back an auto­matic reply saying that they couldn’t accept my e-mail because not from an address asso­ci­ated with any account - but I could phone a cer­tain phone number.

I phoned the phone number, and to start with, I asked for the name of the pres­i­dent of Abe Books, so he knew how angry I already was. He told me that once a pay­ment doesn’t go through they cancel the order and they can’t put it through again.

I just re-​ordered the book - and sev­eral others - from Ama​zon.com, for a bit more money. But with Amazon I know I won’t get bull shit.

Now, after estab­lish­ing a rea­son­able value to parts of my col­lec­tion for insur­ing pur­poses, I would like to find out how to sell my 12 volume, 2 part set of ” The Works of Henry Fielding”.

The info from Abe­books has pin­pointed exactly what I have. But….I col­lect books and have no idea where to go to real­ize their actual value from a sale.

Logan