9/14/06 Rocking the very foundation of modern capitalism

I needed two textbooks for this semester's class (Accounting and Finance...boooo!), and the were about $350 at the bookstore. I shutter at paying that much for books that I will probably never read the first time, much less more than once. Sensing a challenge, I checked online. B&N...expensive, Amazon...expensive, Textbooks.com...expensive. Half.com...half the price of the others! Hooray! $65 a book. Not too bad when compared to $125 a book. (I pity the fools who bought their books retail from a bookstore...suckers!) I've always liked Half.com. I've order several things from them, and have never been disappointed. The sellers of the about-to-be-my textbooks had only been members since July 06, so they only had a few feedback comments (I always check), but they were positive, and said things like, "Got my book right away...a pleasure to work with". I figure everybody's gotta start somewhere, so why penalize someone for being new to the selling scene? So I ordered my books and eagerly (snort!) awaited their arrival. Chris was a Half.com virgin, and because I'm a nice person, I clued him in to the cheap internet textbook scene. My confirmation email said that the books were being shipped media mail, and could take 4 to 8 days to arrive. Nooooo problem. So I wait. And wait. And wait. And no books come. We edging ever closer to the part of the syllabus that says "Read three chapters in your textbook every day", and still no books. I checked the status. It says they shipped. I email the sellers to see when they sent them. No response. Chris is having the same lack of response by his sellers (who, ironically, also started selling in July. Hmmmm). Today, I checked the feedback status of my sellers again. I ordered my books on 8/25, and all comments previous to that are positive. All comments after that are negative. It's like, on that very day, the bottom fell out of the textbook business. I see comments like, "Seller has not sent item neither responded to emails. Avoid seller completely!" and "DO NOT PURCHASE anything from this user...I waited 3 weeks and still nothing" and "This guy is a scammer! He never responded to my emails, and he never sent my books!" Now, talk like this makes me nervous. More nervous at the sheer volume of people who never got books. Really nervous when my reading assignment is due NEXT THURSDAY! I feel so used. So cheated. I've been buying online for years, and I've never been scammed before. And I feel really bad for bringing Chris into this, especially since it's probably warped his internet buying experience forever.