Why book dealers are nothing like the cable company

I ordered some books from Barnes & Noble last night. They’re research books which is always a gamble on the internet. As I’m sure you can imagine, I love buying books and the best part of buying them is the shopping part. I really love sitting on the floor in a book store surrounded with piles of books and sorting through them till I find the one or seven I’m looking for. With the internet, even with the Look Inside feature, you can’t leaf through the pages, check out the pictures, or really dig around in there to make sure it’s what you need.

The books I need happened to be used and really cheap so I gambled. They came from some of B&Ns vendors, the used book dealers that contract with them. I got about 500 emails from the two different vendors basically telling me the received my order, they found my order in their warehouse, they’d put it on the work table to pack, and then that they’d packed the book in a box with styrofoam peanuts. After all this excessive communication I finally got the message I was really waiting for. The book had been shipped.

I should “expect delivery in 5-21 business days”. 5 to 21 days? Really? Is this just the most extreme example of under promise, over deliver or what? Jeez if it goes the entire 21 days, I’ll have long forgotten what I ordered. Maybe the book dealers are taking cues from the cable company for their times of arrival to work on your Internet.

Alright, Mrs. Bright, we’ll be there sometime between Tuesday at 8am to Thursday at 5pm. Someone must be present at the house or we’ll never come back and you’ll be Internetless for all time. Bwa ha ha ha ha. Don’t try to run to the store or even spend an excessive amount of time in the bathroom while you wait for us.  And then the cable people twirl their little mustaches and sneer at you.

So, you guys wanna start a betting pool on when my books will arrive? I put $5 on eight days. Who’s in?