I promised Horace to blog about this, so here it is.
Long long time ago (actually Aug 23 2006), I ordered 6 books from Dove. At first, I thought about buying them from Amazon.com, the online bookseller which I bought most of the books from before this incident. And as any Chinese will do, I compare prices against Amazon.ca & Christianbook.com, as well as Dovebook.com. I never bought any book from Dove before but I heard that they specialize in Biblical & Theological books, and Horace told me their used book department is very good in terms of service and delivery. So I made the decision to order from them since Dove’s grand total of my books is the least among the 3 compared (well, not only am I a Chinese, I happen to be a Chinese pastor, so “price does matter”.)
The first 2 books arrived one month later. During that time, I called and asked the whereabout of my books. But the answer I got mostly was, “we don’t know” or “sorry, there is nothing we can do”. When I asked why it take so long for them to ship, they said they have to wait for the book to be sent from the publishers first. It is at that point that I come to realize they don’t have any new book in stock (at least not those I ordered). They won’t request any book from any publisher unless they received an actual order. And once the books are shipped, they do not have any tracking method to locate them neither. Hence all they can tell me is that the items are shipped but they don’t know when the books will actually arrived (or even want to estimate how long).
Another month had passed, and I received 3 more from my list of 6. And then finally on Dec 1 (yet another month that is), I received the last one from my order. So how long did it take to ship my whole order? Over 3 months! Can you believe that?
My biggest problem with Dove is that they never mention they don’t keep books in stock. This creates a huge problem for me. Just imagine you are a teacher or student. You ordered your textbooks in the beginning of the term, and yet they did not arrive until the term is over! How ridiculous is that?! I only hope that such information is made clear in their website upfront before someone consider buying from them.
As for used books, there won’t be a problem of course (in fact, Horace said from his experience that their delivery is very timely and the post-sales service is great), since they have all of them sitting at their warehouse.
I just hope people from Dove books understand that as pastors, we need books and materials in a timely manner. When they can not arrive on schedule, classes can not be held and it is no use to receive those books 2 months after.
Sometimes, when an opportunity is gone, it’s gone. And it’s the same whether you are a customer or a seller.
