It could have been £300 and you will still complain and be the sucker for paying for that. Is the seller obligated to ship to you at a price of £2?
You could probably shop around a bunch of Oxfams to (maybe) get the book you wanted for cheap. Or you could also find discounted books at the Oxfam and list them for just £1 or 2 above the sticker price. Is that worth your time?
Like I get being upset at institutional practices like soft drinks costing companies a handful of pence per item when they charge £2.50 (or £4.50 at the cinema), and being stingy on the refills. Books on the other hand are a luxury item that (other than the textbook racket by publishers) you can go without.
You should definitely spend time trawling through Oxfam shops for books, if this annoys you.
For those curious:
The book is Entangled Life - How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures
A used book for 12£ is maybe 8€ more than I normally spent on used books.
Most book sellers on the Internet roam around, buy used books, cut them to make them look new and then sell it as new.
Cut them? What does that man?
Using a paper cutter, aligning the worn pages along the outside edge of the book into a nice looking rectangle
They take a bit off the edges, which, when done right, can make them look new at a first glance
Putting the £ sign after the value is in itself mildly infuriating.
At least they didn’t write 1£99
Mildly?
I’m going to assume they’re not British…
Maybe they just typed it out how they would say it?
It’s the way all other units are handled. I don’t get why money has to be treated differently. Maybe because currencies are the Gods of our time… (hits vape)
The price printed on it says 12.99 but yeah that is bullshit. They could not even be bothered to remove the sticker.
That was the price when new though
Welcome to capitalism!
This behavior is literally millennia older than capitalism.
Well yeah that is why it’s bull
“one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” almost to the letter.
The book is for sale for ten pounds on the Oxfam website. Looks like the ebay seller found this book in a sale or something.
I don’t see why they can’t ask a reasonable price. They put a little time and effort into listing and posting the thing, they could’ve just recycled the thing if they were done with it, and OP could’ve looked around and gotten the book for cheaper.
I think this mildly infuriating because OP clearly missed a good sale, but this isn’t bullshit.
I could see it if the book was new and just being resold. But I gathered tgat it is used from the post and the text
X10 markup on a product you bought from a charity is not a reasonable price imo
Then you should have not bought it
Could be worse, they may have been gifted the book from someone that stole it from the shop.
listen, you paid what you thought it was worth to you that’s how retail works they buy product, then sell them at a markup you buy products from them only if you think it’s worth the price they’re asking you get the product, they get the money
I don’t think about the price, It’s about reselling something you got at a charity.
Plenty of stores sell cheap, used stuff that everyone can fit in their budgets. More and more of these resellers are picking the stores clean, leaving a lot less available for those who “need” it.
charity shops aren’t for those who “need” the products, their sole purpose is to generate funds for the charity. have you lost your mind?
Well, not according to these organisations, like Oxfam here who boast about the ecological and social aspect of second hand products.
Clearly you have no idea what these organisations do or stand for?
Bought where on the internet? I think that context is quite relevant tbh.
You chose to buy it at that price. What does it matter what the original price was or how much the seller made? You thought the price was fair, had the choice to not buy it or buy it somewhere else.
This isn’t like scalpers buying up items, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices for profit. This is just plain old capitalism.
Presumably the price also included shipping and handling fees, since you bought it online. So in the end the seller probably made just a couple of quid, he deserves to get paid for what he does no?
12£ is just the book, no shipping included.
Making a X10 markup on something you bought from a charity is infuriating imo
And sorry for finding basic capitalism infuriating.
0.0£ at your local library.
Ah yes, libraries. Those mega buildings with every book on Earth inside…
The picture shows ISBN 9781784708276
I search this to get the title: “Entangled Life - How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures”
I see £, so I’m going to assume it’s the UK. I picked Manchester as a city to search.
I search the book.
Seven 2021 versions, three 2020 versions, and audio book are available.
Which means even if it’s not available in OPs local library they could go to their library and get it on an interlibrary loan.
fyi OP said theyre from another country. Not that it makes other points made invalid.
Found two copies in the Municipal Library of Prague. This is not some super-obscure title.
I dont doubt that, but saying that its readily available assuming OP lives in the country where the book comes from is not necesarily true
Based and librarypilled
You’re right. Since they don’t have every book ever written, why bother even looking?
Do your libraries not have a system to request books from other libraries? Not trying to be a jerk, I just have looked for some obscure things before and sometimes they had to be requested from other libraries.
https://search.worldcat.org/ is a good inter-library search site. My librarians use it (among other things, I’m sure) to find books/DVDs to acquire for me on ILL, but since the site is public sometimes I just do the search for them and send them a link to what I want when I submit a hold request.
Lol.
Oh, yes let’s let perfection be the enemy of good.
It’s a rare thing I can’t get from my Library (mostly music and some movies), but anything educational and it’s there.
I regularly check out DVD collections from The Teaching Company of university courses - I’m talking Harvard, Columbia, etc. Currently have History of Western Civilization on deck for ripping. It’s 40 hours of lectures, the DVD collection would cost $1500 on the open market.
It’s one of dozens I’ve ripped for my own use, and converted to MP3 to listen when at gym or in the car.
If the shipping is more than 99p it would have been cheaper for you to buy it new.
https://www.waterstones.com/book/entangled-life/merlin-sheldrake/9781784708276
I can also see multiple options for second hand between £5-£7.
Or as others have said, there’s the library.
It was your choice to pay near original price + shipping for second hand
I’m curious, why are you putting the £ symbol after the number and not before?
I’m sorry I’m not English so I’m used to Euros, I wasn’t sure if the £ was supposed to be before or after
The seller took the time and gas to go and get books from oxfam so that you could have it shipped to your house
It always sucks to know you paid more than the seller did - but that just means Oxfam undervalued the book.
Having worked in one, charity shops tend to have a habit of either really undervaluing or overvaluing their donated goods - cause the people who actually set the prices mostly just guess based on looks and nothing more. Only if an item looks expensive will they do any research, and even then never really enough.
With the rise of ebay thrift resalers, I feel like all the charity/thrift stores around me price rather aggressively.
Our local shop has a database of values.
Granted, it’s not perfect, but I would assume since they have one it’s a publicly traded commodity (that is someone maintains a DB and sells it to such organizations).
Costs money and time to package and ship stuff. They should’ve at least removed the sticker though.
Takes time and money to do that as well though, and I kinda feel like op would not have appreciated that markup
1•99
It’s crazy, right?
The whole world’s gone sideways.
Ok, don’t buy it online then go get it from the thrift store yourself. Oh that takes valuable time and effort? Guess that’s why it was marked up, peoples’ time is worth money.
Because I live in another country, a non English speaking one, so there’s zero chance that thud book will make it to my country thrift store
My case rests, the seller of the book provided you a valuable service then by making a product available to you that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to get, and you’re mad that they made a little money for their time?
