Re: [TCLUG:18442] What books do you recommend for a newbie?

[Dave Sherohman <esper@usinternet.com>]

> >   There's just *gotta* be a catch...

I placed one order with bookpool (last October) before closing my account
there.

I ordered 3 books.  Two were in stock, the other was backordered.  A month
later, the third book was still backordered with no expected date of
availability and I was never contacted and asked whether they should ship the
available books.  When I complained about this, I was essentially stonewalled
with, "We can't afford to do two shipments at the same price as one" - even
after I explicitly stated (twice!) that that's not what I was asking for,
just email saying, "We still don't have your book.  Do you want us to send
the rest of your order now, even though it means you'll get charged a little
more for shipping?".

Incidentally, the backordered book was in stock at Amazon and fatbrain both
when the order was placed and when I went back to check on it a month later.
I suspect that it was continually available from the other booksellers during
the time bookpool was out of stock, but I haven't attempted to verify this.

In order to get the two books that were available, I had to cancel the entire
original order and reorder them.  Customer service confirmed that (at that
time, at least) they had no method in place to remove books from an existing
order.

Finally, I ended up ordering 2 of the books from fatbrain and the third from
bookpool.  fatbrain charged $4.90 for shipping 2 books and they arrived in
2-3 days.  bookpool charged $5.38 for shipping 1 book and it took roughly a
week to get here.

Since then, I've stuck with fatbrain.

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