Re: Abebooks' Price Increase

Dear AE:

Where did this "Michael Stillman" come from? The one that wrote the article on the ABE commission on shipping? It appears he was giving us good reason as to why ABE should take this commission and telling us to live with it! Well here is what I run into a lot with shipping.

I'm a Canadian small bookstore located in Langley, British Columbia, I charge a $9.00 shipping fee (which is cheap for Canada, our postage is enormous); average size book from BC to Ontario costs me $12.60 shipping. I shipped a $10.00 book to customer in Ontario:

$10.00 book charge + 9.00 shipping = 19.00 total
minus shipping to ON = 12.60 minus book cost = 2.00
(sometimes more/less)
minus credit card = .85
(average ????)
minus 8% = 1.52
minus packaging = 1.20 (envelope/labels/printing paper/cartridges) invoices

TOTAL = 18.17 costs - 19.00 = .83 _ OH YES I FORGOT MY MONTHLY FEE! Wow so now I'm paying to sell! So with Abe taking their 8% of my shipping .72 cents yes that will leave me with a profit of .11 cents (maybe).

ABE is in it for the $ not the customer, small book stores are going broke with ABE, many of us want to leave and are looking for alternatives. ABE recognizes that we do not have many choices and plays on that for their profit. They are unethical. Abe should go after the dealers they say are messing with the shipping. Abe needs some heavy-duty competition, they are worse than our Canada Postal Service when it comes to squeezing money out us.

Please don't say to increase your shipping fees, that will only give me fewer customers and ABE more money. ABE has not done one thing since I have been with them, about 6 years, to increase the seller's profit, only to increase theirs!

Any help with this would be sincerely appreciated.

Sincerely,

Rita of
Mole's Collectibles (Books)
Langley, BC V3A 1M2
Canada


Editorial Response:

It was not my intention to take sides in this issue but simply to report on what happened. As a result, I published both AbeBooks' explanation and the objections we heard from booksellers.

In terms of advising sellers to "live with it" or move on, my observation over the years is that while Abe does have forums to hear their sellers concerns, ultimately they call the shots and rarely roll them back in any substantial way. That being the case, I don't see much else a bookseller can do besides either cutting the cord or living with the rates, though that may require increasing your prices, since you cannot make up for unprofitable sales with volume. If there is a third way, I and many others undoubtedly would be interested in knowing, but such things as boycotts rarely seem to have an impact.

Regards,
Mike Stillman

re: Abe Fee Increases

While you write about the new ABE fees on shipping, you FAIL to note that this also applies to those of us who collect sales taxes which under ABE are billed as extra shipping charges. Currently with a credit card transaction, we lose money on each instate transaction since we pay a credit card fee on the sales taxes. With the new fees, we now also pay ABE a NEW fee on sales taxes since they are billed as extra shipping. Thus with a 8.25% sales tax that we pay the state, we will now only collect $7.14 on every $100 sale while we need to pay the State $8.25. Thus an instant loss of $1.11. ABE refuses to make the collection of sales taxes free of their fees.

re: Abebooks' Price Increase

Thanks for the updates. In respect to ABE price increase they are also charging 8% on top of required State Sales Tax.

John Schram
Samuel Lasenby
Bookseller ABE and Biblio

Dear Bruce,

I realize you've probably heard more than you ever want to about the issues with ABE, but thought you might find this interesting. I've had 8 cancelled orders because of credit card errors with ABE in the last 6 months, and every one I've called, or contacted the customer, and the credit card number was just fine, and I've completed the sale.

I've contacted ABE numerous times about the problem, and they seem to believe there isn't any issue. So, the moral of the story is to continue contacting your customers directly.

Kol

re: PayPal "Funhouse" Article

The seller could have fixed the problem in 2 minutes or less by adding the extra incorrect email to their emails registered with Paypal. We have a number of common typo/spelling errors that we leave registered just for this problem. On Paypal as soon as you add the email you can go in and accept the pending payment and if you don't wish to keep that email on Paypal you can then delete it. If the seller has the email wrong in their listing/s they should leave it registered until they have fixed the error in all the listings.

Thank you for another nice issue.

Cheryl

re: Transy Thieves

I enjoyed the story but a bookseller, preservers of the written language that we are, should know that the term is hare-brained, not hair-brained.

Regards,

Larry Dean