Free Shipping is Great, if you can afford to WAIT!
by robynkoz - Written: Dec 02 '02 (Updated Dec 02 '02)
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| Full Review |
General Overview
Barnes and Noble.com (bn.com) is a full-service online bookstore. In addition to an excellent selection of books, they offer videos and DVDs, music and calendars. They also offer an interesting selection of free online courses. However, their shipping times are unreliable, and their customer service unresponsive.
What they do right
They have for quite some time now been offering free shipping if your order two or more items to be delivered to the same address. They have a pretty good selection, and also have a network of out-of-print book dealers that you can search for hard-to-find titles.
If you have a Reader's Advantage membership (which costs $25/year) you will receive a 5% discount on all bn.com orders (and a 10% discount on anything purchased in their brick and mortar stores). If you buy books only online, you need to buy over $500 worth of books before this membership pays off, so consider carefully how much you will actually use it before signing up.
I have tried one of their free online courses, and it was quite enjoyable.
What they do wrong
Their on-time delivery is iffy, and their customer service is abysmal! If their website says an item is "In Stock: Ships within 2-3 days" you cannot count on the item being shipped within 3 business days, though many times they do manage to get everything out on time.
In the most recent case when I had an order ship later than advertised, I never received a reply to my email stating that I was disappointed and asking why there had been a delay that I had not even been informed of.
Of my last four orders, three went off without a hitch. The fourth was delayed by several days beyond the advertised shipping date. This frequency of delayed deliveries has been typical of their service over the past 4 years that I have been ordering from them.
In the most recent incident, I placed the order on July 26th containing 7 items, all of which were listed on the website as being "in stock" and all of which had a "ships within 24 hours" indication except for one item that had a "ships within 2-3 days". I selected "ship all items at once" in order to take advantage of the free shipping offer, expecting all of the items to be shipped in the 2-3 day timeframe of my slowest-shipping selection. On July 28th, I received an email that one item had been shipped (presumably from a separate warehouse) and that the remainder of my order was estimated to ship on July 30th. (Since there was a weekend intervening, this was within the 2-3 (presumably business) days quoted, and I was satisfied with this estimate.) In actual fact, the order did not ship until August 2, fully a week after my initial order. I never received any notification or explanation of the delay, even when I wrote to their customer service department to complain. Note that this is not abysmally late. But when they are shipping later than advertised, I should at least be informed. Ideally, they should have shipped the ready portion of my order by the advertised date and just kept me waiting for the items they didn't really have ready to ship in the time advertised on their website. (By contrast, Amazon has done this for me in the past, without my having to contact them or inquire about my order, when they have been mistaken about the ready availability of an item. While it doesn't get that item to you on time, it at least minimizes the impact by getting the rest of your order to you on time.)
After this happened, I wrote to them complaining about their service. I wrote, in part:
...the majority of
my order did not ship until August 2, a full week after I placed the
order, and an additional three business days after the projected shipping
date of 7/30 quoted [in their 7/28 email to me].
Why was I not informed that there was to be a delay in shipping my
items, beyond the timeframe listed in the item descriptions and beyond
the date quoted in this letter? Why, when it became clear that at
least one item was not available within the advertised timeframe was I
not sent the rest of the items separately so that I would get at least
most of my order on time?
As I mentioned above, I never received any reply to this letter. My concerns were simply ignored.
Play the Odds?
In my experience, if you order from bn.com, you are playing the odds. Their prices and selection are good, and their free shipping offer and our Barnes and Noble Advantage membership discount (we purchase a fair bit from their brick and mortar stores, so it does pay off for us) keep me coming back. But approximately one time in four I am disappointed and frustrated by a delayed shipment and non-existent customer service. If you can afford to take the risk that your order may be delayed (sometimes substantially) from the advertised shipping schedule, the other advantages of this shop may be worth the risk, but do be aware that this happens all too often, in my experience. :(
I've never paid extra for their expedited delivery services, so I'm not sure if they are more religious about getting those orders shipped in time or not.
Good luck with your shopping!
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