After a close relative passed away, we were settling the estate and since the relative used to be a mental health professional, there were many books in that field from Freud, Jung, Adler, you name it, that were CLASSICS in the field and still remain benchmarks to this day.
My relative had met a number of distinguished practitioners at various conventions and conferences and had quite a few autographed books that they had given to my relative. Fritz Perls who was the founder of transcational analysis —or so HE claimed, gave my relative quite a few and my relative had a very good collection. The only problem was we could not pay to have them stored so we thought that since Austin was a town of scholars and students, that if we sold them to Half Price Books, we could get some of what they were worth and someone else more interested in this topic could benefit from the books being available for purchase.
We loaded up the best titles in two large boxes and went to the South Lamar location.
Keep in mind that this was a few years ago but I am told that they are still doing the same thing by people who have sold books to them ONCE —because they expected a fair price and got (CENSORED) instead!
I was shopping elsewhere in the store and happened to overhear the persons in charge of the buy-back program expressing their ignorance about who these practitioners and scholars were when they were looking at my relative's books. They were not very complimentary — to say the least —and they sure didn't know that we were listening to them.
They were snickering when they announced that their offer was ready and when we showed up, they SNEERINGLY offered us 50 cents for BOTH BOXES OF BOOKS and some were autographed by the original authors!
That's when I told them, " No but (Censored) No!" and when I went to pick my books up from their counter, the bottom of the box fell out and the books went everywhere on the floor. (I suspect they cut the bottoms out of the boxes...)
These were rather large and heavy books and it took us quite a while to stack them and get most of them out of the store without a box. They had plenty of sturdy large boxes but they did NOT offer to help us or give us one of the boxes.
I am not sure if I got all the books that fell or not and that is where they ripped me off! They did not help me, and my back was hurting with the weight of all the books. I wasn't paid anything for the ones I dropped, not even 50 cents and I had no choice to leave them there because we were both loaded down with the books from both of the boxes.
I took the books and put them in several afterhours library depositories around town rather than let the people at Half Price Books have them! I have NEVER gone back to that store again!
It is OK to buy from the other Half Price Books but I will NEVER let myself get (CENSORED) by them AGAIN! I have seen people come in during the 2001 High Tech Recession and were forced to sell their books for practically nothing then.
I used to think that particuliar Half Price Books rips off almost EVERYBODY who was forced to sell them their books, magazines, music and videos! After reading the other entries on THE RIP OFF REPORT about them, I see that it is not confined to just the one Austin store!
I am just thankful that we did not let them RIP US OFF quite as badly as they had intended originally!
0 comments