Half.com

Full review
I have been shopping and selling on half.com for 9 years. If there was some viable alternative, I'd go elsewhere.

When I first started w/half.com, the name meant something. You could figure prices would be just what they said half, or less. If you had problems, you could email staff for help. The book listings gave information about the book, in addition to title and author.

Then Ebay took over. At first the changes were subtle, then at one point, they tried to close the whole site down, saying you could sell on ebay. That caused a lot of problems, as you had to close your account, remove your inventory and so on. Then, they changed their mind and said half.com would stay a separate site. More problems as you have to change names to fit their ebay/half.com rules, relist your inventory and some changes to their "service".

If you are familiar with the lack of service Ebay has, remember that half.com is run by Ebay and that will give you an idea what the service is like at half.com. The difference is that Ebay actually has better service! At least at Ebay, after you jump through hoops, you can get to a contact page. Not half.com. Click on all the help titles, none of which may match your problem, and you get nowhere. You can't get ahold of anyone!

In addition to the terrible customer service, the links for books are generally not very helpful. If you go to Amazon.com to locate a book or movie, you type in the title, and you get all the information. It lists author, storyline, etc. Not half.com. Most books don't even tell you what the book is about. Often they have the wrong picture, wrong isbn #, list it as hardback when it's paperback and vice versa. The listing of hardback when it's paperback makes a difference, because you pay more for shipping a hardback. Here's something else. You can look up a book that's retail value is say $19.99. It's current, nothing special. You'll have sellers listing it at the retail price or lower, but you'll also have lots of listings for the same book at outrageous prices, maybe even in the hundreds of dollars. Why? Sometimes there will be no books listed of a particular title other than the outrageously priced book. I've checked Amazon and other places to see if there is some collectors value I wasn't aware of, but no. The book is just listed at that price. Why? I've emailed sellers and asked them why they are listing a $12 book for $365.00 and gotten no response. I've been told that half.com gives a fee break to volume sellers, so the sellers list books they don't have and know they won't sell at outrageous prices, just to increase their inventory to get the better rate.

If you buy on half.com, it's pretty simple, just click buy and go to check out. One good thing is if you buy more than one book from the same seller, your shipping costs will be half on any books after the first.

If you're a seller on half.com, you are going to get ripped. First you are charged 15% fee on your sales. Ok, you know what when you sign up. But what you don't always know is that they steal some of your shipping fees. For instance a person buys one of your books, half.com charges them $3.59 to ship. Then half.com takes $1.00 from that $3.59 and gives you $2.59. Excuse me? It costs at least $2.50 to ship a book, and I'm not counting heavier books, or hardbacks. You lose money. Consider also that if a buyer buys more than one book from you and they only pay $1.59 for each additional book, you might end up several dollars short of what you need to pay to ship. I asked half.com about this several years ago, when you could still get through to them albeit with great difficulty. Their response was they take the money to offset listing fees. Huh? Don't they already take 15%?

Overall, half.com does provide a service, but there are things to keep in mind. If you want to buy a book, check Amazon first for details & information that half.com doesn't list, then check half.com to see who has the better price. If you want to sell and have some higher priced books in demand, you might do ok. If you want to sell some less expensive books and get more than 25 cents that you'd get at a yard sale (maybe 75 cents at half.com) AND the books are small and lightweight, you can try that, but realize you won't make much. Still I guess if you sell a lot books, you'll make something.