Buying textbooks online

I needed 3 textbooks for class this Fall. One book I bought used directly from another student, the other 2 I ordered online from the campus bookstore. The books were used and were a decent price so I thought I'd go ahead and just get them rather than hunting around online for a better price. I should have known that it wouldn't be as easy as that.

I placed my order on August 21st, 2 full weeks before classes started. One week later on August 28th, I noticed that my credit card hadn't been charged and I never received a confirmation e-mail. I called the bookstore, and I think the girl I talked to was named Holly. Holly took down my information and said she would track my order and call me back. She never called but I did get my confirmation e-mail and my credit card was charged that afternoon, so I figured she just forgot, but who cared, the order had been processed!

One week later, Tuesday September 4th, first day of class. No books. Now, keep in mind that this is an order coming from in town. It should have taken 2 days.

I called the book store and explained my problem. Kevin said they were so busy that it would be a while before they could look into it, but they would get back to me by end of business. No problem, its the first day of class, I'm sure it was crazy in there and I didn't care if I didn't have my books the first day.

I called Wednesday morning at 8am. No, Kevin said, he hadn't gotten the chance to look up my order but he would do so and call me back. By 4oclock that afternoon I still hadn't heard from him so I went down there to ask him in person. He said he was busy and still hadn't looked up my order. He told me that I should just buy the books again and return the others when they showed up. I was irritated, but gave him the benefit of the doubt. It was the first couple days of class and they were busy. I bought a second set of books and immediately started studying the interesting material. *cough*

The whole situation kept replaying in my head and the more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I'm really lucky that I had the means to buy a second set of books. It was $291, that's a lot of money and he had no way of knowing that I wasn't some broke college student living student loan to student loan. I called back Thursday morning. No, he still hadn't looked up my order.

Ok, this is getting ridiculous. Seriously? You can't take 5 minutes to go track my order and tell me where its at?

I called back on Tuesday, September 11th. Kevin gave me a little attitude. On Wednesday the 12th, I physically went to a different campus book store and asked if there was a general manager over the book stores I could talk to. Anthony told me that she was out of the office but was there anything he could help me with. I told him this same story and he said he would call Kevin for me right then and tell him to track my order because I was escalating the issue to the senior manager. Yay Anthony!! Seriously, I wish somebody else could have seen the look on this guys face when I told him that Keven told me to just buy the books again.

Somehow Kevin managed to take 2 minutes from his busy text book sales to look up my order. Funny how that works. 3 weeks and 1 day after I placed my order, it was still sitting in the book store. I asked about the confirmation e-mail and was told that they sent it when they printed the shipping label, not when the order actually ships. I thought this actually worked out pretty good. I had already bought the books I needed, they can just cancel the order and credit my account back the $291. No problem and they would even throw in a $25 gift certificate. I stood there and listened to Anthony tell Kevin to credit my account immediately. After Anthony got off the phone, he apologized for the whole mess and gave me the senior managers business card. He said I should call back if my account hadn't been credited by Friday.

Today is September 18th. 4 weeks to the day that I placed the order. The $291 has NOT been credited to my account. I called Brenda, the senior manager, and she called my buddy Kevin. Guess who hasn't credited my account?!?!?!

Anyway, Brenda was super nice and very helpful and after talking to her I should have an actual receipt of the credit being mailed to me. She told me to call back if the credit doesn't show up tomorrow. I really hope I don't have to call her.