Good Job Indigo
21 July 2004, the wee hours
So I received a book in the mail today, a $130 dollar book. Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet. I bought the book at Indigo. I should have known better. I should have bought it at Amazon. I’ve had problems with Indigo’s lacklustre shipping performance twice before. Today they left my book out in the rain. So, my book is a little bit wet. I’m looking at it now, about 6 hours or so after they dropped it off, and it’s still wet.
I should also bitch out the people that did the actual delivering of my book, Canada Post. What kind of a fucking idiot leaves a package in the rain. One in a cardboard box no less.
Incase you can’t tell, I’m really anal about my books. Really anal. In a strange and obsessive sort of way.
i’m well aware of how anal you are about your books, but i think most anyone would be upset to discover a 130 dollar book had been left out in the rain. canada post left 600 dollars worth of textbooks on my porch earlier this year. i’m just lucky it was too cold to rain.
by rishi on July 21 2004, 9:12 am #
The last book I ordered from them came wrapped in plastic. Yours weren’t?
by martha on July 21 2004, 1:33 pm #
Dude, why are you supporting the competition? ;-) E-mail them and bitch. Amazon would be nice and send you a new book. Although, it does sound a lot like Canada Post’s fault (and Canada Post also ships Amazon’s books). I’ve also rarely seen books wrapped in plastic.
by Ryan on July 21 2004, 2:35 pm #
Yeah. I’ve never gotten books in plastic before. I think it might have been the books publisher that wrapped your book in plastic, not amazon/indigo most likely.
My new plan is to have the chapters near my house order the book for me, and i’ll buy it from them there. This way Canada Post can’t fuck shit up.
Are you sure that Amazon uses Canada Post as well? I’m sure I was able to track packages and stuff I bought from Amazon, something I wasn’t able to do with Indigo.
It breaks my heart looking at that book. Poor, wet-ass book.
by ramanan on July 21 2004, 2:51 pm #
Yeah. It’s illegal for them to operate a bookstore in Canada, since they aren’t owed by Canadians (they are traded on NASDAQ, so assorted Americans own most of the company). Thus, Amazon.ca is operated out of the US, Canada Post handles all the delivering, and customer service gets handled in France or England or some such non-Canada place.
by Ryan on July 21 2004, 5:32 pm #
Yeah. I remember you explaining this to me before. There way of getting around Canadian content laws or some such thing right?
I’ve packaged my book up, and will be shipping it back. Much like Amazon, Indigo does have good customer service going for it. The guy didn’t give me any hassles. He just explained what I was supposed to do. Rogers, Fido and Telus should take a page out of Indigo and Amazon’s book.
My new plan is to go to my local chapters and have them order the book. I can’t imagine them mangling it up.
by ramanan on July 21 2004, 5:54 pm #
what about the .ca domain? when my company registered for a .ca, they had to jump through all these hoops to prove they were canadian operated. is that no longer the case? also, i thought amazon’s warehouse was in mississauga or some such place, does shipping orders from within canada count as operating a canadian bookstore? i always wondered why they wouldn’t just ship everything from the american store, it has so much more stuff. why won’t they?
also, i’ve always got great customer service from fido. they’re only bad for holding back refunds 6 months too long.
by rishi on July 21 2004, 6:20 pm #