"I am done with them. I am slowly culling my book collection of about 2000 books, which includes many modern first editions, some signed. Some are worth a little bit, some are not. Before I sell or donate books, I check on-line prices on several sites, and I assume lower end of the spectrum because after all those books are still for sale and I'm looking at asking prices. Still, I have an idea of whether a book is worth in the range of a penny, a dollar, or a hundred dollars before I decide to part with it and how. I have a certain price range that I'll take into HalfPrice Books. Well, no matter how many books or what kind I bring to the Concord, CA store, the offer is ALWAYS $13. I maintain that because I've taken that offer in the past, they have me in their computer as such, and that is all I will ever be offered. They deny that is the case, that the store doesn't track past payments -- supposedly only their corporate office has that capability. My sister and I were laughing about it, because before I went today I told her that's what they would probably offer me. And that's what happened. I am donating the books. Won't buy from there either, as a matter of principle. I'll stick with library book sales. So...you think they'll offer me $13 altogether for my signed Richard Nixon and Bing Crosby and Dr. Seuss 1st editions?? And my signed 1st edition early Sue Graftons? I should test it."
"They should call it half price crooks. I love shopping there but will never sell my books to them again. I brought it around 30 books that included the popular twighlight series, nicholas sparks and lauren conrad. All in great condition. I probably spent around $360 on all of them, read them once and they offered me $7. That is less than a price of one new????"
"I wish I had read the reviews before I took 5 boxes of books (about 100 books)to the Highland Park, IL store. They paid $35 which was literally pennies per book and since I had brought them from Michigan and was suffering with back pains I didn't feel like loading the books back into the boxes and reloading the car. When I asked how the books were priced, the answer was vague. I'd have been better off donating the books to Goodwill and taking a charitable tax deduction based on how much Goodwill sells books for, which is more than I was paid by Half Price Books. I wouldn't shop there either after my experience. There are plenty of other used book stores."
"I am disappointed with this store. I was going to sell books in their mint condition, only to get $8 from them. I knew I can get more from these books than that, so I jus took my books and walked out."
"I had a horrible experience at the Highland Park location on Lake-Cook Road last weekend. I carried in two boxes of books and looked around for the counter to sell books. I saw a very young employee standing in front having coffee. I asked him and he replied very rudely, "There's a big red sign RIGHT THERE!" as he pointed across the room at a counter that I did not obviously see. I sarcastically thanked him for pointing it out to me. I turned in my books and waited approximately 15 minutes for an offer. They offered me $8.00. When I asked to see an itemized list, there were only 6 books listed! I thought this was very dishonest given their prices and being that my books were newer, read only once and shelved. I had them box them right away and took them back to my car. I would rather donate them! I was dissapointed given that I had visited the Niles location on Touhy and had a great experience buying books. I will never visit the HP location ever! They were very rude!"
"I went to half priced books today with a pretty up-to-date collection. I had only four shopping bags but they included all the new "celebrity biography books". This includes all of Tori Spellings books, Lauren Conrad the whole series, and a few comedians books. That is just a few I had taken in, I've paid 20 dollars or more for each book. They offered me 25 dollars, after they had taken them all out of the bag and mixed them around. the employees try to intimidate you and make you feel as if you will be causing a scene to deny their off. I was HIGHLY disappointed and very off put by the way they handle items before you've even accepted their offer. I will not go back to buy or sell books from there. "
"It was a horrible experience. I brought in over a hundred video cassette tapes. At this current time, their value is practically nothing, however this was quite a few years ago. The man behind the counter dumped all of my video tapes out of the box and offered me seven dollars for them. Since they were mixed in with everything else behind the counter, I felt like it would be too much to refuse their offer since all of my video tapes were mixed in with everything else. I think that they do this on purpose to make the person feel "funny" for asking for your stuff back. I got seven dollars for over one hundred video tapes which averages less than a dime a video that they offered me. The week after I sold them my videos,I went into the store and saw that they were selling the videos for fifty cents a piece. Dishonest! This company will go out of business if they continue in this way!"
"I am very disappointed in HPB and will never go into their store either to buy or sell. I took 82 paperbacks and 8 hard covers and was offered $11.00! I was told that the condition of most were not good enough for them to sell. All books were read once and then placed on a bookshelf, so the condition was fairly good. I also looked on the shelves for condition of similar books and they were no better than what I brought. I took the offer simply because I didn't want to carry that many books back to my car.
Please donate your books to a library or charity instead of letting HPB rip you off. I wish I had donated them as was my originally plan and learned my lesson. I even donated the $11.00 to a local charity."
"Defenders of HPB will usually say "what did you think you'd get, it's basically a pawn shop", while true that one should realize what they are getting into, it is sad to see a company take advantage of the economic times we are in. In the first place it is hard to bring in your treasured items into a place like this. I had to make really tough decisions on what i wanted to sell just so i could survive, and of course HPB takes advantage of this. Also they don't give you an itemized detail of what they buy each item for, I was told today that some items are worthless when they take them. If this is so how can they sell them? the problem is they don't tell you what is worthless. This is not my biggest complaint of half-price books though. The biggest problem is that the employees that handle the sale seem to make up what they want to give you. Listening to them talk they are like " meh, we get a lot of those so it should me this much". I trusted HPB until I sold the Belgariad collection(easton press) to them. the books go easily now since the author died for $600, what did they give me? $50, the books were signed by the author. There are 5 books in the collection, they sell each one for $150!! no longer will I sell to them, no longer will I buy from them. The location I went to was the Bloomingdale, Il location.
There also seems to be no consistency between stores either. One store will give you nothing for your stuff, others will give you a lot. Try it yourself and see, I took some items to the Bloomingdale, Il location, then took the same items to the Palatine, Il location and the amount the were going to give was $60 more at the palatine store. HPB needs to be more Honest about there selling, I am looking into laws of the area to see what laws they are breaking, I'm sure they are not following the same laws as a Pawn Shop, which is what they are. HPB quit letting Angsty college kids decide how much stuff is worth and be honest!"
"I've read some of these past reviews and all of them say the same thing: the organization is not honest with their pricing and selling.
I found this out to be true after I sold about 16 bestselling books and 7 magazines to Half Priced books. I thought I would get a good deal off these books, but I didn't. In return, I got $5.50. I accepted the offer, but regretted it later. I could have gotten a better amount if I sold them at garage sale. I am never selling or buying books at Half Priced Books again because of being cheated out on this book deal."
"Don't even think about selling used books to this store. It took more than a half hour for staff to offer me $5 for a box of hardback books -- about 7% of what they will resell the books for in the store. A total waste of time. I won't go back."
"Watch yourself when selling items to Half Price, they tend to say something to the effect of "We'll take everything for $6.50", but that really means "We'll buy these 7 items for $6.50 and take the other 60 items for free". Ask specifically what they're offering of the items that your selling, they tend to do this most with bulk drop offs(say your moving and cleaning out old books or CDs by the box load). Also, Goodwill is in many cases a better alternative to used book/media stores as their "fair market values" listed on the Goodwill site are universal and not based on the media content or popularity and are tax deductible(mind you have to itemize your taxes which can be a pain). I found Goodwill to be a much better deal at $1.99 per CD off next years taxes rather than the $20.00 offered on my 128 CDs(all good condition and in original cases) by Half Price. Goodwill stated prices for some items(full list available online): CD/DVD-$1.99, Hardcover Books-$1.79, Softcover Books-$.89, Children's Books-$.59, Videos-$.99
Just a few things to keep in mind."
"I brought in a couple of boxes of decently good books (I have bought used books all my life, I have a good grasp of this). My impression was that the kid at their buying station had never been involved with books in her entire life, and had been through some kind of 2 week "training" course to buy. The off was low, with the better books in the reject pile (which, I might add, they wouldn't let me keep. They are all or nothing when you sell). I watched her puzzle over books by Ian Rankin, Charles De Lint, and the like, putting them in seemingly random piles according to some unknown sorting system. Then the off ended up averaging about .50 for hardbacks and .10 for paperbacks (current science fiction, 2009 mysteries, etc). She refused to let me have the stuff back that was in the reject pile; when I insisted, she split them off, sent me off into the store for another 15 minutes, then called me back with an offer that was much as the first, minus exactly $1 for the pile (1-15 hardcovers, 15 or so paperbacks) that I wanted to keep. I decided to pass, took my books to a University District independent (small) bookstore, and got an offer for 3 times the amount.
The problem here is that the kids doing the buying are not even remotely book people, don't have a very wide base of book knowledge, and are stuck in a strict, easy-to-teach half good book buyer education. Don't blame the buyer kids, but I don't think I'll ever sell to them again."
"They always list items out of stock. You will always find stuff unavailable. Don't know why? Like a site without superviser or management group."
"A bad experience. I will never sell books there or shop there ever again! I was moving and brought nine boxes of books. The staff went through everything so fast and offered me thirty dollars for all nine boxes. There were some good books in there! Most of the books were already taken out of the boxes and I felt obliged to just take the money. Later, I noticed that about four of the boxes were behind the manager's desk. I asked about them, and the manager was very intimidating. He said they were for "recycling." I though this was very suspicious, as they hadn't mentioned it when they quoted me the thirty dollars. He very gruffly told me I could take the thirty dollars and the books, or take the money and leave them the other four boxes. Sensing a scam, I said I would take the boxes. When I left, I felt used and cheated. I know that they were going to sell the books, not recycle them. I felt they were hidden behind the desk purposely. I don't trust them. Thirty dollars was far below what the nine boxes of books were worth. I wrote a letter to their headquarters but never heard back. I have since sent a second letter."