Half.com

Full review
It sure is convenient and great place to save money for media items (books including text books, DVD, VHS, CD), but it's just a market place where people can sell their own USED/NEW media items at.(pretty much same as Amazon market place), Not One Big store like Amazon or B&N, So you always have to remember that you must pay for S&H for each item. Currently S&H for a DVD is $2.99 and S&H for a Book is $3.99 at half.com, For example; if you are going to buy 2 DVD and unless those 2 DVD are sold by a same seller, you have to expect to pay $2.99 x 2=$5.98 for your 2 DVD order. (that's expensive for S&H for DVD), so Unless you find media items at real bargain price at Half.com (I mean if still cheap even after you add S&H for each item) , I don't really recommend to shop at.


Recently I was looking for a children's book by Eric Carle & Japanese Author (1/2 in English by E.Carle and 1/2 in Japanese by the Japenese author), I thought that the book would be a great birthday gift for a son of my friend 'cause the boy is half-Japanese and half-Hispanic and lives in US (so his languages are Japanese, Spanish and English), and my daughter would like the book too (she's Half-Japanese and Half-African-American), so I was looking for 2 copies of the book, I usually start price research with stores like Amazon, Overstock, deepdiscount, and Ebay, so I did for the book of course, but even the cheapest price is $17.99 or so (at Deepdiscount or Overstock, I forgot), so if I wanted 2 copies, it'd cost over $35!! avarage price of the book at those stores are approx $17.99-19.99, no cheaper than that, and I checked at Half.com, there are 2 sellers who offered the book one at $5.00 as new and one at $5.79 as new. When you find this kind of Bargain, that's when you consider buying at Half.com, I remember that $3.99 for S&H for each item, so the book at $5.00 +$3.99 S&H=$8.99 and the other one at $5.79+$3.99 S&H=$9.78 and the total for the 2 books including S&H is $18.77!!! almost the price of One book at elsewhere. I bought them of course, but there were some problem, according to the Half.com regulation, those sellers had to ship me those books within 4 days from my order date which was August 31, so they had to ship by Sept 4, and half.com notified me that they'd be shipping by Sept 4, but even after 2 weeks of Sept 4, no books arrived!!! they were in US (one in NY and one in FL, I am in CO), and even from E.coast to W.Coast location, media mail takes 6-8 days or so, not 2 weeks long. (I sell sometimes on Ebay and use Media mail often, and I always check delivery status as a seller. In my knowledge, only when I shipped media item to Alaska, took 3 weeks for delivery, withih 48 states, as late as 7-8 days). I thought it was strange, then finaly both books arrived on Sept 20!! (took 16 days from Sept 4!) and noticed that one of the sellers purchased postage with Stamp.com or something like that and the date she purchased the stamp and shiped was Sept 17!!!!! Not Sept 4!! I needed it asap, so I could have wrapped it up to send to my friend's son for his Birthday. (I sent it to my friend today, I bet my gift was huge delay). what a dishonest seller, if there was some reason for delay for shipment, she should have notified, right?
I bet the other seller shipped the book to me 7-10 days after Sept 4
to, and Yesterday I was wrapping up one of the books to sent my friend's son, and noticed that scores on the book cover, looked like my name and address..Yes, looked like the seller printed my name and address over the book with a ball point pen after she put the book in the envelope!!!!!! do you think you can give this to someone as a gift?? Fortunately I ordered 2 same books-one for my daughter, and I checked her cover, it had too some score looked like my name seller printed, but it had litte score, so I switched the cover and sent a cleaner one to my friend. You have to be careful to deal with a person, they are not a store, many of them have no professional attitudes towards customers. I was happy with the price, but sure not happy with delayed shipping and careless handling manner(those books were sold as new). Please remember that things like this could happen to you too.

I've wrote some article about price comparison for media item including Half.com price, if you're interested, please read at www.
badhousekeeper.blogspot.com (yes, bad haousekeeper, that's me).