ThriftBooksReviews 375

The site's quality ratings are extremely unreliable. I have ordered "books" titled acceptable or good and they're far from it. Six of the books I ordered were excessively written in or damaged. A lot of the books look like you're purchasing one with a new cover. However, the book that comes in the mail has a cover from the 1990s. This is extremely frustrating as I'm trying to buy books to help build my classroom library. I don't want my students to have falling apart books from the 1990s.

There are higher quality and cheap books on this site. It's not worth gambling to see if you're actually going to get one of these books though. An in-person used bookstore would be a better choice than ordering from thrift books or just spending the extra money to go to B&N.

Wish I read the reviews... bought several books in "like new" state but all of them had some sort of defect. One had a gash on the cover, another had brown dirt stuck on the cover, inner spine ungluing, all of them had bent pages, etc. They send the books in a thin plastic bag with 0 padding, so they arrive even more beat up from the postal handling.

I understand this is a used book site blah blah but I specifically paid more for "like new" condition and they arrived looking like this.

I see a lot of people on here complaining about the condition of their books and while a few of them were valid (I saw a book with a band aid stuck on the cover, yikes!) a lot weren't. I think people are fundamentally missing the point of a USED BOOK site, some books are going to be pretty banged up. You have the option to pick how much you want to pay for the condition you want the book to be in. I saw someone complain their book arrived without a dust jacket and they weren't told that would happen. I found that hard to believe as there's an option to drop down and see warnings like "missing dust jacket" on the site. Mostly I think people just don't understand how the website works, I've ordered over 100 books and only received one book that was disappointingly damaged but which I could tell occurred during shipping. I'm sorry to the people that have had genuine issues though!

It's hard for me to believe some of the bad reviews here. Some seem to have vendetta against them- maybe they're competitors. I discovered ThriftBooks this summer (2020) and have ordered over 30 books, most used. I have had no problems. Good hardbound books for $4 - $5 is a great value. All the books are rated on their website from acceptable to very good and are priced accordingly. I'm not sure how the company is set up, but books are shipped from all over the country. So, if you order four books, they might ship two together from the same location and the other two from different locations. I also ordered new books from ThriftBooks. I compared their new book prices against Amazon. Some were more expensive and some were less expensive. All I can say is they are very close and you can compare. None of the books I received were damaged in shipping. That's always a possibility for anything being shipped, but I had no problems with ThriftBooks. Try a used book ~ $5, plus tax, always shipped free! You also earn credits and get a free book (l've received 3 free books so far). I am not affiliated with ThriftBooks in any way. But after reading the reviews here I felt the need to comment. Try them and you will be hooked! The photo below shows some of the books with white label that I ordered from ThriftBooks.

There have been a few hiccups in my history with ThriftBooks but ultimately they are one of the only used bookstores online that are worth anything.

Thrifting books can be a mixed bag. So, Thrift Books is no different. For the most part, their quality is good; great variety of books, good rewards system, timely shipping and fantastic customer service.

My only advice is that you take their listings with a grain of salt. Sometimes you'll get a book in better condition than it's listed, sometimes you'll get it in lesser condition and they don't always like to list if it is a former library book or not.

Beware of allergies, too, when purchasing. I have received smokey smelling books and occasionally ones with pet fur in it. Which is gross but also not altogether surprising because such is life.

But! Always keep that in mind.

Prices are no better than if I had bought at amazon or target. Shipping was extremely careless. Items are not as described on the site. Products that should have been in new condition are all damaged. They try to switch and bait people (offer new book-send an old book) hoping they won't pay out of pocket to sent back. Do yourself a favor and go to a reputable store with good shipping and return policies or you'll just be wasting time and money shipping these guys their damaged products back.

This site used a picture of a book with a similar name and then sent the book they actually carried (title is similar but wrong cover and author). I searched by ISBN and it showed the correct book that was needed for my class. Once I got the book, it was a similar title with a totally different cover. I called to ask what happened because I had screenshots of the book I ordered as well as a copy of the ISBN. I was told that they didn't even carry the book I needed and that she was sorry. I was told that I had to pay for the return shipping and a restocking fee. After all was said and done, I lost almost $10 from my pocket because of the shipping and restocking fee. False advertisement and this customer was screwed. Never, ever order from this site! (First picture is what was sent, second is what I ordered. As you can see, they show the correct book, but sent the wrong one).

Ordered a book from them. Got here in fine time, and "correct" book was received but... wrong *edition*. So... kinda entirely wrong book. So buyer beware, you need to check the very very fine print to ensure that what you're getting is the correct book AND edition, as they lump all of them into the same entry, and don't split seperate editions into their own entry.
Edit: within 10 minutes of me contacting customer response, they completely resolved my issue. So, the caveat above still stands, but also know that they are on top of things, and you really do just need to be Very Discerning. But, for the prices available, you could stand to save a lot of money if all it means is inspecting your purchase for an extra 30 seconds. I will be checking thriftbooks.com again for whenever I need a hardcopy book. Just, I'll be a bit more cautious.