Unhappy B.

At present, abebooks is having difficulty policing its sellers. A central problem is that the abebooks.com website has no provision for feedback from buyers. Because unhappy buyers are silenced, prospective buyers can not tell good sellers from the unscrupulous. Based on the complaints here, as well as my own experience, sellers know that can provide less than satisfactory service, with no expectation of being policed by the abebooks people. It is somewhat shocking that abebooks states they are an amazon.com subsidiary, as Amazon tries much harder,

So, rhetorically, why not one star? The reason is that the abebooks phone service did initiate a refund promptly in my case.

My case: Placed an order, paying for expedited shipping. Seller waited ten days to ship, then purchased the cheapest shipping service available (media mail), not priority service, as promised. Book is not scheduled to arrive by promised date. Seller sent obviously false claims in email.

Overall, I'd say that abebooks is a service I would use, but not if I needed the book promptly. If I had, say, six or eight weeks before I needed the book, I'd try abebooks, then cancel the transaction if the associated seller failed to deliver, using another supplier.