Complaint Review: Textbook Wheel

I sold some books to textbook wheel several years ago when they first started. I received my money quickly and the whole process went smoothly. I see a lot of complaints and it confuses me because the experience went just fine for me. I used Paypal to get paid, perhaps it goes better that way. 

I am so fortunate for the many many reports I am reading with regard to "Textbook Wheel" scams. I came so close to selling my books to them till I cautiously decided to look up the company's reputation first. I just want to say to the employer, RIPPED OFF BY THE USPS? YEAH RIGHT! As many reports as I read about your company all over the internet, I highly doubt that ALL the employees from the USPS are part of an evil scheme to make your company look like a fraud, so they SEEK OUT all these books and steal/damage them just to make you look bad.

I mean seriously, how stupid do you really think people are not so see through your deceitful rhetoric? If this was something that happened maybe a couple times I could see, but I am reading about frustrated customers that were 'had' by your company everywhere. It's a shame you are still allowed to operate. Furthermore, of all the companies in the world, why the heck would the USPS go after text books??? They process extremely valuable packages from companies like Tiffany's, Cash4gold.com (who tries to pull the same crap you are doing), Saks 5th ave, Neiman Marcus, Ebay, and other companies that deal in high end products that far exceed the value of your textbooks. Grow some ethics and STOP RIPPING PPL OFF!!!!!!!

Personally, I cannot see where Textbook Wheel has a basis for filing a claim on the lost or stolen items. This should be accomplished by the ORIGINATING party, unless they have already been paid for the items shipped. In that case, the DESTINATION / RECEIVER should file the claim to recover any lost revenue. Ideally, here's what should have happened;

The SENDER ships their books. Ideally, if the value of the shipment is 100 dollars or above, sender insures the shipment. That way, if anything happens during shipment, there's a way to recover the value.

The RECEIVER receives the shipment on the other side, noting any damages, open packages or other signs of tampering or loss. RECEIVER then notifies both the SENDER AND the SHIPPER, IN WRITING, that the shipment was damaged during transit. This ensures proper documentation, provides SENDER additional ammo to file a claim, and provides RECEIVER additional loss prevention info.

Again, if the shipment is valued over 100 dollars, it should be insured! In this economy, who wants to lose that kind of money!?

As always we apologize to any and all customers that feel they have been wronged by us.

Our free shipping label provides free shipping through US Postal Service Media Mail. Media Mail is the lowest form of USPS mail. It has lowest priority; gets treated the worst, takes the longest, but weighs the most therefore easily gets damaged and broken apart. There is no tracking, insurance, or record on Media Mail. All the label provides is free shipping...nothing else. We (you and I, both customers of the USPS) have no way of being able to hold the post office accountable for what they lose or damage.

While the US Postal Service has a decent track record they often lose or damage packages. We try to take as much responsibility for what happens, but in all actuality it is out of our hands until we are notified from the post office that we have received packages to be picked up at the post office.

Being that we are the only textbook buyers in the area, our local post office assumes all loose textbooks belong to us and periodically sends us a boatload of loose books for us to sift through and try to figure out what orders they belong to. This is virtually impossible to do considering it is just a textbook...no order number, name, address, or even package to go off of.

When we receive inquiries like Ms. Donaldson's we go through our shelves of loose books received from the USPS in hopes of matching up to your order. If we can match any of our loose books to an order, we pay out immediately as we did with this order. We were not able to find all of Ms. Donaldson's books, but we were able to find about half resulting in us paying Ms. Donaldson $129.25 out of her total order of $235.50.

In situations like this TextBookWheel.Com looses out as well. We loose a customer due to unsatisfactory circumstances with the USPS and results in bad press. We also never receive the books, therefore not being able to pay our customers. We understand that finding a portion of customers orders in our loose books does not compensate for the frustration and inconvenience our customers experience in these situations, but we want our customers to know that we make every effort to right a situation that we (TextBookWheel and our customers) both have been wronged in.
Thank you.