Monday, June 10, 2013

Website Review: Barnes and Noble.Com

Stars: 4 out of 5

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

If their DVD prices match their competition, I would probably give most of my internet shopping business to Barnes and Noble's website.  Their shipping speed makes me very happy and helps me save money I can use on future purchases.  Any time it makes sense, I give them my business.

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