A few weeks ago, a new potential client approached us with a question that caught me off guard: “Is thriftbooks a real company?”
On reflection, I found this to be an honest question, but it took me a bit by surprise. “of course, we are a real company”, I thought, “how could it seem that we are not?”
You are reading: Is thrift books reliable
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me why someone would ask this. In our expanding virtual world, made even more so by the pandemic, we are right to wonder what is on the other side of the bright screen in front of us. therefore, I would like to take some time to share a bit more about second-hand books.
thriftbooks is a real company. We were founded in 2003 as one of the first used book sellers on Amazon. Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to expand into other markets and develop our own destination website, right here at thriftbooks.com.
We have worked exceptionally hard to establish ourselves as a real company, but there is much more to this answer.
about second-hand books
We are a company powered by real, passionate people. We directly employ the people who work in our processing centers, reaching out to a thousand teammates across the United States. These are real jobs for hard-working team members, many of whom have been with us for years, progressing from entry-level positions to operations and corporate management roles. I could (and maybe should) spend entire blogs highlighting employee advancement success stories, as they truly are inspiring.
We purchase millions of pounds of used books each month, transport them to our various processing center locations, separate valuable books from damaged materials, assign an accurate quality rating to each book received, and list books on the ones our algorithms tell us are in demand in our marketplaces and thriftbooks.com for fair market value.
We do not sell all the books we purchase at retail. We have a team of people who also focus on providing books to those who need them, such as prisons, local community centers, non-profit organizations, and even schools in underdeveloped countries. If we can’t find a new home for a book, such as those that may be too damaged to read, we take responsibility for recycling them properly.
You can imagine there are significant costs to running a large-scale company like this, totally committed to getting the job done right every day of the year. you’d be right we constantly invest in our customer experience, we innovate endlessly, constantly challenging ourselves to be the best at what we do. we are building what we hope will be a lasting brand.
our clients mean the world to us
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When I joined thriftbooks about 18 months ago, I was intrigued by the opportunity to combine my passion for marketing with my personal desire to “do good.” What I have found in my time as a leader in this organization is countless like-minded people, all passionate about doing what is right for our customers.
Our customer service team is committed and tireless. I am impressed by the dedication they have to make every experience extraordinary for our clients. In 2020, ThriftBooks Customer Service was ranked in the top 3 for Best Customer Service by America’s Online Booksellers for the third year in a row, in company with Amazon and Powell’s Books, 50. With over 730,000 reviews on trustpilot, our customer rating continues to be “excellent”.
These are solid external testers, but let me share some behind-the-scenes stuff that may surprise you.
When you type in our web suggestion form on our website, your question or comment doesn’t just go to our customer support team. It also goes to our president (one of the founders of the company) and to me. we read them all and take them seriously.
When you post your book purchases on social media with the thriftbooks tag still on the spine, our general managers look up the inventory ID to see which employees in our processing centers touched that book during its journey to you and share your post with them. We love to see your excitement about your latest book find, offer, or reading challenge!
our team makes us who we are
Our web team built thriftbooks.com and our thriftbooks app from scratch. it is our own patented system and we are very proud of it. We do not sell customer data and we do not post ads on our site. We work hard to find the best approach to listing and browsing the millions of books we have in inventory and have copies of the books you know you want, and even the ones you don’t know you want until you discover them.
Our ancient receivers, who work on the repair, classification and listing of our rare and collectible books, are employees with impressive bibliocentric backgrounds. they are committed to matching one-of-a-kind books with homes that cherish them. it is not a job for them; in fact, it is a dedication to making this connection. their knowledge and passion for these valuable books runs deep and between them they can provide a level of insight and information on all of our tens of thousands of collectible books.
We pride ourselves on being a good partner with our communities through our donations to non-profits and small clubs or exciting projects we hear about through social media or our email savings books. our relationship with the community also extends to libraries across the country. Through our profit-sharing partnerships and supporting your fundraising galas, we’re honored to call libraries our partners.
the value of a brand
Unfortunately, not every used bookstore you find online has the same level of commitment to your business. As I have discovered, the used book business is riddled with arbitrageurs and those who do not have the best interest of the customer in mind. many are committed only to getting as much money from you as possible, without investing in any aspect of an actual business. These bad actors exploit the system and subject you, the customer, to their fraudulent ways. they buy books from us only to resell them on amazon or other markets for more money to unsuspecting consumers.
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The arbitration does not end there. Often these sellers never physically touch the book, they list the ghost inventory on amazon and then when it sells they buy the book from us, enter the seller’s address and make us ship the book and incur the cost of labor and Shipping. the customer receives the book purchased from the arbitrageur at a higher price than thriftbooks would have sold it outright.
In extreme but not uncommon scenarios, these arbitrageurs will take a customer’s money and also file an amazon refund claim against us. in those cases, the arbitrageur receives the customer’s money and a refund from us, all without doing any work or taking any inventory risk. third-party marketplaces allow this on a scale we cannot control.
Arbitrators do not operate or provide jobs in processing centers. they do not invest in technology to provide a safe and easy shopping experience. They don’t care about fair market prices, nor do they care about playing a significant role in the communities where employees and customers thrive. they don’t create brands because they don’t have a brand promise to offer.
Make no mistake, this problem isn’t just with books. many categories and industries are affected and unfortunately our industry has yet to implement effective controls to stop this practice. That’s why we encourage consumers to buy directly from us; then you can rest assured that you will get our product, selected and packaged by our dedicated employees and backed by our best-in-class customer service team. that’s our brand promise, and we stand by it 24/7/365.
more than a real company
It’s totally reasonable to ask if a company is real, but is that enough? not for me. thriftbooks is real, but arbitrageurs are real too. perhaps additional questions are “is the company a good player? can the brand be trusted? does the company have a fair business model that supports the entire chain, from suppliers to employees to customers?”
thriftbooks is certainly a good actor. We’re not perfect and we’re always looking for ways to improve, but we care immensely about our employees, our partners, our communities, and our customers. we truly love books and continually strive to achieve that lofty goal: matching each book with a new home.
that’s our idea of real.
About the Author: Barbara Hagen is the Vice President of Marketing and Sales here at ThriftBooks. She has over 20 years of experience as a senior marketing executive, with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from syracuse university, an master’s degree in international marketing from nyu stern school of business, and an master’s degree in data analytics, also from stern school by nyu.
read more from barbara hagen
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