"Extra fees were added to my invoice that were not originally disclosed. Customer Service is terrible. From my experience Alibris can be a scummy company."
"I was a bookseller on Alibris and cancelled my account due to their lack of customer service. I sold a book and sent it to the customer. I then received an email from Alibris that the order was cancelled and they refunded the customers money because it wasn't shipped on time. It was shipped on time, I have the post office receipt to prove it. I contacted Alibris customer service to have them address the error and not cancel the order. They told me it was my fault and if I wanted money for the book that I had to contact the customer and have her pay for the book again on Alibris.
I was so offended. Why do I pay a yearly fee to sell on Alibris if they are going to blame their errors on me and as a customer I would be upset if someone outside of the company I bought from contacted me and asked me to pay for an item again. This is not good business tactics. Horrible service. Alibri's has not contacted me in response to my second inquiry in this matter."
"Alibris is deceitful. I have used it a number of times but each time have issues with shipping costs. They claim that there is a choice of shipping at checkout, but have not seen it yet. Shipping is always marked up from what the seller would charge (and seller has no control of shipping costs) and so Alibris makes a tidy profit. If transaction is cancelled, has to be done directly through seller who may then be penalised. Have to concur with most of other negative comments."
"I have sent numerous emails, no response. I was given a tracking number that tracks nothing. I still don't have the books I ordered. They had no problem taking my $160 but actually getting the book is not happening. Now I have to buy a book from someone else and pay for expedited shipping."
"Horrible! They sent me an email one day after I placed my order that my book had been shipped and I would get it within 4-14 days. When I asked them for a tracking number, I got a rude one-liner response: "Order in process". After reading their reviews online I had little hope I would actually be receiving my book. And I was right. After waiting 2 weeks I asked them about the whereabouts of my order and they said: "We ship it within 48 hours of order via USPS First call mail. It take 4-14
days. If still not deliver then might be lost. Can we reship it or process
refund". I asked for a refund and two days later they replied with the SAME generic email again! It was only today, 3 weeks after my order was placed that I finally got the refund confirmation from them: "We process refund". That was it! No attempts at any explanation about what went wrong and completely unapologetic! I will never be doing business with them again and advise you to also STAY AWAY!"
"I received a book that I never ordered. I do not know, yet, where they charged me but I will have to change my account numbers. I do not appreciate a company selling me and charging me for something that I did not buy. This is going to be reported to LifeLock.
Jeff."
"I am very disappointed with Alibris. My husband and I are in the same class and we ordered two textbooks 2 weeks before school started. We received a confirmation email and were told that it would take 5-16 days and that we would receive another email when they shipped. Here we are, 14 days later, without any email confirmation of shipment. We looked at our bank statement and realized that we were refunded two amounts equal to what we paid for the books, but we never received any kind of notification that our order was cancelled or that our books weren't going to be shipped. We have a reading assignment from our book tonight and we do not have access to the textbook.
To make matters worse, the only "customer service" options Alibris has is email. If you call the telephone number, all you get is an automated response. I am very frustrated with Alibris' service. "
"I ordered a few times from Alibris. I had problems with their delivery times. The last order I placed, 57124118, is one month into it and still there is no word on when it will be delivered. The excuse I received is that, since it comes from a bookseller in England, delivery takes much longer. This is close to absurd in this day and age, when Amazon delivers overnight on Sundays. Another problem is that this kind of delay was not apparent in the book or seller description at the time I placed the order. It only surfaced a few days later when I inquired why my order showed as "pending" (it still does).
This is a textbook for a class, so delivery times are important. Classes already started and I still don't have the book. I had to buy it again at the college bookstore, new. I asked for a refund but haven't heard yet.
Unfortunately this is not my first bad experience with Alibris. I will never order again from this company and I don't recommend it to anyone else.
UPDATE 8/24/2015-
I emailed Alibris and they responded that they will refund my paypal payment in full. The emai came within hours and I am very appreciative of the speed of resolution. I will update customer service overall rating from 2 to 4 stars."
"Alibris charged my credit card 7 times for the same transaction, their customer service has been unresponsive. To top it off, they couldn't provide a shipping method that I requested and have done nothing to rectify the situation. This company is irresponsible and clearly unwilling to provide proper customer service. I will never buy anything from here again and I suggest that anyone use any other ecommerce site for what you're looking for besides this one. They have hurt my credit, caused interest to unnecessarily build and have been unresponsive. Just terrible."
"Just used Alibris for the first time and was quite impressed. Was looking for an out-of-print book, typed in the author name and found several available copies. The order took a few minutes to process. Received the book in less than a week. Thanks Alibris!"
"Ordered a book that was described as "Very Good". Received the book and the spine was broken and the corner was bent on a Hard Cover book.. Company issued a refund.. thank you"
"I ordered 3 books and 1 movie on Alibris.com. They had the lowest price on books and on the movie. After reading some reviews, I was a bit concerned but after doing additional research, I found that Alibris has been around since 1999 and few of my friends told me about them recently. I placed the order and received it in few days. No issues with my order at all."
"I just recently bought two movies on Alibris by a seller called Newtownvideo; Animal House and A Beautiful Mind. I saved a little on freight because the two movies were from the same seller. I was surprised that the movies got to me as fast as they did. I would buy from this seller again.
http://www.alibris.com/stores/newtown1 I have included a link to their storefront.
"
"I'm old school when it comes to buying music as I still prefer the actual CD over a digital download. I just always thought that the physical disc gave me more options, including importing it in to my itunes so that by buying a CD I'm covered all around. Many of the reviews here are about books, but I always go to Alibris to buy music. Most of the CDs that I want to add to my collection are 99c, which...if you're counting is like the price of 1 song to download. Shipping, no matter what you buy is always $3.99 so at the end of the day I walk away with most of my albums costing less than $5. They also have a pretty sweet setup where if you buy multiple items from the same seller you get $1.00 off of the shipping price for each additional item. That knocks the cost per album down to less than $4.00 (if you buy more than 1).
They also have a lot of the older / hard to find albums, so this place is great for me.
The only thing I would like to improve is the shipping times. Sometimes it takes almost 2 weeks for my items to get to my house. That said, I now only buy from sellers that are in my state, and that has kept the shipping times down to most less than a week."
"ALibris allows their sellers to provide false descriptions of the condition of their books and then back the seller 100% without even seeing the book, refuses to refund return shipping back to credit card, tried to give a $3.00 coupon instead. Customer service is terrible, does not care about the customers only their best interest which is making money off the sellers who rip off the customers. ALibris allows their sellers to hide all negative feedback. Don't ever buy from ALIBRIS and even worse their seller TEXTBOOKNOOK ,10641 Braden Dickey Ln,Suite 3
Knoxville TN 37932. They advertised the condition of the book as : "Successful Project Management (with Microsoft Project 2010) Good Awesome Text For the Price! ! ! Includes Unopened DVD! ! This was not true, when I removed it from the envelope the book practically fell apart in two. There is absolutely no binding! All the pages up to p.356 is hanging by one page and pg. 357 to the end is hanging by one page and page 357 is has a rip because there is no support. I cannot resale this book in this condition or would even consider keeping a book for myself in this poor condition. There was no mention that this book had such poor binding and the whole book was secured by two pages. I have pics to prove this.
After requesting return shipping refund TEXTBOOKNOOK and sending photos of the book falling apart, they still stated their book description was accurate and refused to refund return shipping cost. What is worse is ALIBRIS backed this seller up and didn't even see the book. Also this is what TEXTBOOKNOOK advertises for their business: I promise any dissatisfaction it will be fixed very quickly; it is a big deal to me. This is what I do for a living and how the bills are barely paid, so I want to make sure everything is correct for my sake and certainly for my family's sake. It makes a huge difference for us sellers not only that we have positive feedback, but also that we have a lot of them!!! Not only do they provide inaccurate book description but also do not live up to their business promises.
"