EatinOlives
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- Oct 23, 2011
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OK here's the deal. Bought a textbook for a class used from a third party seller, and the seller only said the book was "Like New". Their description said: "ALMOST BRAND NEW", that's it. I order the book and it takes a while to get here, but still within Amazon's gigantic window of delivery.
Today the book arrives and obviously something's up. The inside pages are all in black and white and printed on super cheap grey ashy paper, the kind you see in dime romance novels off Half Price Books. The back of the back is entirely in black, and I notice a black stripe running along the back edge that ends up looking like black tape. I peel off the tape (hard to do, had to push in a credit card slowly through the tape to peel it off)0 and sure enough, I uncover this bit of wonderful text printed on the back:
*Elsevier is the publisher
Hooray, I got sold a dirt-cheap edition of this book illegally. In fact, I can't find any copyright information pages anywhere in the book. I'm questioning if it's even a legal copy.
Thing is, though, the book seems to be printed in its entirety. Pages don't seem to be missing, and the book is in English and readable. There's a bit of difficulty in reading some graphs or figures that rely on color to convey information, but it's all legible.
If I raise a fuss over this it won't be because the book is unusable, it would be strictly because I was sold a book illegally. But I still feel pissed and I think I should dispute it. It would obviously be more convenient for me to just keep the book (it was $35) than it would be to complain to Amazon, but god damn it their shitty underhanded way of covering the label that says the sale of this book is illegal really pisses me off.
I should mention the book was shipped from Mumbai even though there was no indication it was shipped from overseas. The ISBN number between my book and the one in the product page are different, so it's simply a different product.
I've never disputed an internet purchase before, though. Is this something Amazon will side with me on?
Today the book arrives and obviously something's up. The inside pages are all in black and white and printed on super cheap grey ashy paper, the kind you see in dime romance novels off Half Price Books. The back of the back is entirely in black, and I notice a black stripe running along the back edge that ends up looking like black tape. I peel off the tape (hard to do, had to push in a credit card slowly through the tape to peel it off)0 and sure enough, I uncover this bit of wonderful text printed on the back:
*Elsevier is the publisher
Hooray, I got sold a dirt-cheap edition of this book illegally. In fact, I can't find any copyright information pages anywhere in the book. I'm questioning if it's even a legal copy.
Thing is, though, the book seems to be printed in its entirety. Pages don't seem to be missing, and the book is in English and readable. There's a bit of difficulty in reading some graphs or figures that rely on color to convey information, but it's all legible.
If I raise a fuss over this it won't be because the book is unusable, it would be strictly because I was sold a book illegally. But I still feel pissed and I think I should dispute it. It would obviously be more convenient for me to just keep the book (it was $35) than it would be to complain to Amazon, but god damn it their shitty underhanded way of covering the label that says the sale of this book is illegal really pisses me off.
I should mention the book was shipped from Mumbai even though there was no indication it was shipped from overseas. The ISBN number between my book and the one in the product page are different, so it's simply a different product.
I've never disputed an internet purchase before, though. Is this something Amazon will side with me on?
