r/Thriftbooks

I recently ordered all three volumes of Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance from Thriftbooks. All three of them arrived as cheap, pulpy, print-on-demand editions from Lightning Source LLC, the bane of my book-collecting existence. Even worse, Volumes I and II are printed on acid-free paper, so they‘re pure white, while Volume III is not, so its pages are bronze.

Since these were published by Duke University Press, I assumed they had legit printings. And since they were only available new, they were $25 each. I paid $75 for books that won’t hold together for one reading, let alone a lifetime of ownership. In my view, these POD editions are no different than bootleg rips of CDs or DVDs, and they should not be sold without some kind of disclaimer.

Now they are sending books in thin paper material. My new book just came in bent.

I ordered 3 books from thrift books, each ordered around 5 days apart from each other. They all have been in and out of facilities, shipped to my town then all the sudden in a different state. My packages are saying they have arrived and departed from USPS facilities multiple times. I've put in multiple missing mail requests and nothing is happening. This is probably a problem with USPS and I've ordered these around 2-3 months ago. Im super annoyed and sick of sending in all these requests that don't do anything. has anyone else had this problem, if so did you ever get your books.

This is a warning to anyone ordering from outside the US, because I just got effed over by them ordering to Canada...

This will be my first and ONLY order with ThriftBooks, I'm so frustrated. First I spent 3 days going back and forth with their useless customer service about the educator discount (which is only for US teachers, fine - just put that on the website or in the first email when I specify I'm in Canada...)

But now - I ordered 32 books, paid 400CAD for them including about 90USD in shipping... And they've divvied the order up into 7 separate shipments! Which means that I have to pay the stupid customs processing fee 7 times. I get that they don't control the customs, and I don't mind paying the fee and the taxes, but if I place 1 order, I expect to pay 1 fee, not 7. Instead of 12.50, I'm adding another 87.50 (plus taxes), so my 400$ order is going to end up at closer to 550$.

I get that they have multiple locations, but nothing in the checkout process shows which location or how many shipments - I assumed that they would centralize the order before sending it north... Also, 2 pairs of the shipments are shown as coming from the same place in the tracking, sent out within a day of each other, so WTF?

I asked ThriftBooks to quote some books I had. They quoted $15.82 for a book they’re selling from $215.00-$258.00. I can’t believe I’ve been selling to them and never checked what they sold the books for. I feel so scammed.

The recent 2x offer is NOT real. They have been duping their customers.

I have used thriftbooks for years now and I don't know what's happening at corporate, but they have been making weird moves lately. I am no longer recommending Thriftbooks to people and will be changing all my reviews including on the BBB website.

Hi there.

I've sold several boxes of books to Thriftbooks, and usually I'm paid what I am quoted. Today, I received word that they docked me for one book they have deemed "unacceptable" after inspection. But this is a book I bought from Thriftbooks (used) about two year ago, glanced through to see if any of the jewelry-making projects looked like something I'd be interested in, put back on the shelf for a couple years, and last week, sold back to Thriftbooks. At least, I attempted to sell it back. So tell me why a book that is in the exact same condition as it was when they sent it to me is no longer acceptable?

At least 50% of my orders are incorrectly described. Also, as a high tier member, I use to get amazing deals and now the deals are few and usually crap like, purchase 5+ books and get 200 points, where 5 books would have been 45-75 dollars is now 150+. And all the saved under 7 dollar books and dvds I had were increased to over 8 dollars so I cannot use free book rewards. I use to have 250+ things saved under 7 bucks and about 95% were increased to over 8 dollars.

So very slow to actually ship a brand new book. In this world of Amazon overnight possibility, other regular items delivered from others in days, this company still reeks of the 1980s mail order. Can never recommend.