During the first week of class, the campus bookstores had scarcely any of the books that I needed, so I shopped online for most of my books.

I prefer to use Amazon.com because of their reliability and vast supply of books of all types, but Amazon proved to be a bust this semester, having only a small number of the books I needed and very few of those were used. Thus, I had to broaden my book search to other marketplaces, including textbooks.com and buy.com.

I had a fairly smooth transaction at textbooks.com; order confirmations came quickly as did the physical books that I purchased. I had also bought a couple of eBooks through the site, and I felt that it took too long for the digital download links to arrive in my email. Perhaps my concerns may have been better allayed if the on-site messaging regarding the downloads had been clearer; the site simply stated that the links would arrive in a separate email “later.” Needless to say, they arrived a day later.

I also bought a book from buy.com, a site that I have never used before but about which I had heard generally positive reviews. Admittedly, the forthcoming predicament is my own doing, which makes it all the more frustrating.

I requested overnight shipping when I bought the book, as I needed it as soon as I could get it since it was the first book we were using in that particular class. I placed the order in the morning, and by the afternoon, buyer’s remorse had set in, so I requested to the cancel the order at about 3 PM. I received a reply quickly stating that the order had already been sent to the fulfillment center, but that they would see if it could be canceled. A few hours later, they replied that the order had been shipped already.

The book arrived the next day, which is when I should have initiated the return process and would have too, had I known the calamity that awaited me. Instead, I let a couple weeks slip by before I decided to attempt to return the item. Two weeks, it turns out, is the window in which a customer can return to an item to buy.com. After that time, the customer is stuck with an item he or she may have wished he or she had not bought. What’s most frustrating is that I just missed the window by one business day. Had I thought about it on Friday instead of Monday, I could have avoided this entire headache.

I presented this fact to the customer support person who first assisted me when I called them after finding out online that I could not return the item. She agreed but still insisted on the 14-day return policy, at which point I insisted on speaking with her supervisor. After a few moments on hold, I spoke to “Jessie,” who informed me of the 14-day return policy and whom I informed of my 15-day attempt to return policy.

She said that she understood but had to escalate the case to a “specialist” because she did not have the authority to accept a return a day outside of the 14-day window. Being in the industry, I said that I understood and was content knowing that effort was being made to help me out. A day or two later, I received another phone call from “Jessie” looking to confirm the details of my request (for at least the third time). Having customer service experience gives me a bit more patience than most people, but that phone conversation was nearly two weeks ago.

I called them again yesterday, and they had no new information for me and asked that I wait another three business days for a decision to be handed down from the graybeards in the High Court of Returns in the Buy.com customer service department.

Needless to say, the inordinate length of time it has taken to resolve the issue has put a bad taste in my mouth for Buy.com.

UPDATE: They eventually did take care of the problem, a month or so after I initially reported it.