Good Prices on Books and Great Shipping
I've been a loyal Amazon customer for years, but as I've
watched them act more and more like a bully to anyone around them, I've started
trying to farm out my business when there is little significant difference in
price. One winner has been Barnes &
Noble's web book store, bn.com. In fact,
their shipping has made them the online bookstore of first choice for me.
Products
Barnes & Noble knows it is a bookstore, and that is still
their focus. You will find any book in
print on their virtual bookshelves. They
also have a limited used book service, so you might run across the long out of
print book you've been searching for.
They heavily discount all their hardcovers. Quite often, they give Amazon a run for their
money when it comes to these prices.
Okay, so it's often just 10 cents or so, but I'll take it if I can get
it. Trade paperbacks get a nice discount
as well. Sadly, they rarely discount
mass market paperbacks. Gone are the
days where you can find any of those for less than cover price, I guess.
Barnes & Noble has their own e-reader, the Nook. While I don't have one, I do see links to guy
books for your Nook on the site. The
links are easy enough to spot, so if you are paying attention, you can get the
book in the format you want.
The site offers magazines and newspapers in the traditional
format or for the Nook.
Just like their physical bookstores, the website also offers
Blu-Ray's, DVD's and CD's. Unlike their
stores, they normally offer these at a discount. CD prices are competitive with those I find
elsewhere on the net. Their DVD prices
usually aren't, however. While I check
them out often, it's rare I buy a movie or TV set from them since I can usually
find it much cheaper at Amazon.
Finally, the site does offer a few things that their stores
don't. They have modern video games, for
example. And they have a limited gifts
area that includes some food, art, home accents as well as the stationary you
can find in their stores.
Ease of Use
There's a big search box at the top of the home page. I enter what I am looking for, and it's
usually on the first page of the results.
Occasionally, I have to select a category. For example, I was looking for Disney's
Fantasia Blu-Ray set today. I entered
Fantasia in the search engine, and the first page of results was for the
singer. But I selected movies, and then
the set I wanted was right at the top.
When I look for something more unique like an author, I get their books
as the first result. Usually they are in
bestselling order, but it's easy to skim through the results and find exactly
what I want.
Likewise, ordering is straight forward. Click the big "Add to Cart" button,
and your item is saved for you. When you
are done shopping, you can go to your cart (there's a big icon at the top right
of every page), and follow the simple steps to get the items coming your way.
Shipping
Here's where Barnes & Noble wins any competition for
customer happiness. Like Amazon, they
offer free shipping on any order over $25.
Amazon treats free shipping as a separate, slower shipping speed, and
they ship it when they get around to it.
Barnes & Noble actually treats a free shipping order just like any
other order with their cheap shipping option.
So an item you pre-order will arrive at your door on release day for
free. Items that are in stock usually
take three or four days to arrive; Amazon will just be getting ready to ship my
items at that point. Of course, they will
ship all your items together, so if you preorder or backorder something, that
will delay your entire free shipping shipment.
I just make sure everything in one order is coming out about the same
time, and then I get my order on the last release date.
The site does offer faster shipping options, which generally
cost more money. There's a per order
charge plus the per-item charge, so the minimum you're looking at is $5 for a
book or $3 for a DVD or CD. For those
prices, the standard shipping is just fine to me.
For $25 you can become a Barnes & Nobel member. This gives you a bigger discount on items on
the web site and in the stores themselves.
It also allows you to get free Express delivery on all items.
Customer Service
I don't recall ever having an issue where I had to contact
customer service. One advantage to
ordering from bn.com is that you can return things to a physical store as long
as you have your packing slip.
I did recently place an order with them for a new CD by an
artist I love. I couldn't wait to get my
hands on that CD. I guess I wasn't alone
because the CD was "inexplicably back-ordered." The site never acknowledged this, but they
sent me an e-mail letting me know. They
went ahead and shipped the rest of my order, but that CD didn't show up for
another two weeks. That's the only time
I've ever had a preorder not show up within a day of release date when i
ordered it from them.
Conclusion
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for stopping by. In order to combat spam, I moderate most comments. I'll get to your comment as soon as I can.