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menemen ,
@menemen@lemmy.world avatar

A used book for 12£ is maybe 8€ more than I normally spent on used books.

HeartyBeast ,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

You should definitely spend time trawling through Oxfam shops for books, if this annoys you.

Squirrel ,
@Squirrel@thelemmy.club avatar

It is tacky to leave the sticker on there with the lower price, but you are the one who paid 12£. How does it matter what they paid? If they search for books to resell at a profit, that’s time spent, risk taken, and money earned.

ealoe ,

Ok, don’t buy it online then go get it from the thrift store yourself. Oh that takes valuable time and effort? Guess that’s why it was marked up, peoples’ time is worth money.

ElCanut OP ,

Because I live in another country, a non English speaking one, so there’s zero chance that thud book will make it to my country thrift store

ealoe ,

My case rests, the seller of the book provided you a valuable service then by making a product available to you that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to get, and you’re mad that they made a little money for their time?

elxeno ,

1•99

RizzRustbolt ,

It’s crazy, right?

The whole world’s gone sideways.

Wrench ,

Rofl. Imagine being mildly infuriated that someone marked up a bargain bin purchase by $10 to cover their time and effort to make it available to you to buy from the comfort of your home.

Why don’t you spend your own day rummaging through thrift stores for it next time?

OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe ,

We shit on ‘upselling’ all the time. If you cleaned those pages, pressed them back and touched up the spine of the book, sure. But I’d be annoyed too if there was a 500% markup on a resale of used material

Wrench ,

You see 500% markup.

I see 10 pounds for the time and effort to shop around for bargains, then storing your haul, list the items online, and the cost of the other dozens of books that never sell, and then time and effort to package and ship, and whatever customer service along the way.

TseseJuer ,

just write down the book from memory then

pro_user ,

For those curious:

The book is Entangled Life - How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

Rentlar ,

It could have been £300 and you will still complain and be the sucker for paying for that. Is the seller obligated to ship to you at a price of £2?

You could probably shop around a bunch of Oxfams to (maybe) get the book you wanted for cheap. Or you could also find discounted books at the Oxfam and list them for just £1 or 2 above the sticker price. Is that worth your time?

Like I get being upset at institutional practices like soft drinks costing companies a handful of pence per item when they charge £2.50 (or £4.50 at the cinema), and being stingy on the refills. Books on the other hand are a luxury item that (other than the textbook racket by publishers) you can go without.

blackn1ght ,

Putting the £ sign after the value is in itself mildly infuriating.

ClockworkOtter ,

Mildly?

I’m going to assume they’re not British…

waz ,

Maybe they just typed it out how they would say it?

neo ,

It’s the way all other units are handled. I don’t get why money has to be treated differently. Maybe because currencies are the Gods of our time… (hits vape)

NaoPb ,

At least they didn’t write 1£99

bokherif ,

Most book sellers on the Internet roam around, buy used books, cut them to make them look new and then sell it as new.

jonkenator ,

Cut them? What does that man?

bonn2 ,

They take a bit off the edges, which, when done right, can make them look new at a first glance

Rentlar ,

Using a paper cutter, aligning the worn pages along the outside edge of the book into a nice looking rectangle

DessertStorms ,
@DessertStorms@kbin.social avatar

So you're annoyed that someone (who took the time to go to a charity shop, list the book online, and ship it to you) charged you the RRP for the book, that you didn't have to buy from them?

I hope you have the same kind of energy for when mega-corporations charge anything from tens to thousands of pounds for products that often cost single pounds or even pennies to manufacture (due to underpaying for labour and materials that were in turn manufactured by underpaid labour as well), and the snowballing impact they have on the rest of the economy (by pricing out smaller companies, monopolising industries, avoiding tax, and so on).

The person you bought this from likely works for themsleves, trolling charity shops all day for bargains, and almost certainly pays tax on their income. I'm as anti-capitalist as they get, but even I can't take issue with this. If they had charged you more than the RRP, sure, that'd pushing it, but if you didn't want to pay full price, you should have spent your own time looking for the bargain. ¯*(ツ)*/¯

Illuminostro ,

Wait until you learn about the CEO of Goodwill bragging about all the idiots who give him free shit to sell.

Liz ,

Like I’m gonna fucking spend my time trying to sell my old t-shirts for $2.

ShepherdPie ,

What I do to get back at them is to take all our decent donation stuff to local thrift stores and all the bulky crap that’s barely hanging together goes to Goodwill for them to dispose of.

Liz ,

Yeah I actually hear they’re a shit company, but the idea that they’re somehow pulling one over on the people who donate is fucking rich.

BearOfaTime ,

Even worse, how much his wife was paid in the 90’s, and the percentage of Goodwill income that goes to helping people.

Fuck good will.

Th4tGuyII ,
@Th4tGuyII@kbin.social avatar

It always sucks to know you paid more than the seller did - but that just means Oxfam undervalued the book.

Having worked in one, charity shops tend to have a habit of either really undervaluing or overvaluing their donated goods - cause the people who actually set the prices mostly just guess based on looks and nothing more. Only if an item looks expensive will they do any research, and even then never really enough.

BearOfaTime ,

Our local shop has a database of values.

Granted, it’s not perfect, but I would assume since they have one it’s a publicly traded commodity (that is someone maintains a DB and sells it to such organizations).

Halosheep ,

With the rise of ebay thrift resalers, I feel like all the charity/thrift stores around me price rather aggressively.

FartsWithAnAccent ,
@FartsWithAnAccent@fedia.io avatar

Costs money and time to package and ship stuff. They should've at least removed the sticker though.

meekah ,
@meekah@lemmy.world avatar

Takes time and money to do that as well though, and I kinda feel like op would not have appreciated that markup

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