9mo ago

This used book that I bought for 12£ on the internet was apparently previously bought from Oxfam for 1.99£

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It is tacky to leave the sticker on there with the lower price, but you are the one who paid 12£. How does it matter what they paid? If they search for books to resell at a profit, that's time spent, risk taken, and money earned.

It always sucks to know you paid more than the seller did - but that just means Oxfam undervalued the book.
Having worked in one, charity shops tend to have a habit of either really undervaluing or overvaluing their donated goods - cause the people who actually set the prices mostly just guess based on looks and nothing more. Only if an item looks expensive will they do any research, and even then never really enough.
- Our local shop has a database of values.
  Granted, it's not perfect, but I would assume since they have one it's a publicly traded commodity (that is someone maintains a DB and sells it to such organizations).
- With the rise of ebay thrift resalers, I feel like all the charity/thrift stores around me price rather aggressively.

Ok, don't buy it online then go get it from the thrift store yourself. Oh that takes valuable time and effort? Guess that's why it was marked up, peoples' time is worth money.
- Because I live in another country, a non English speaking one, so there's zero chance that thud book will make it to my country thrift store
  
  My case rests, the seller of the book provided you a valuable service then by making a product available to you that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get, and you're mad that they made a little money for their time?

So you're annoyed that someone (who took the time to go to a charity shop, list the book online, and ship it to you) charged you the RRP for the book, that you didn't have to buy from them?
I hope you have the same kind of energy for when mega-corporations charge anything from tens to thousands of pounds for products that often cost single pounds or even pennies to manufacture (due to underpaying for labour and materials that were in turn manufactured by underpaid labour as well), and the snowballing impact they have on the rest of the economy (by pricing out smaller companies, monopolising industries, avoiding tax, and so on).
The person you bought this from likely works for themsleves, trolling charity shops all day for bargains, and almost certainly pays tax on their income. I'm as anti-capitalist as they get, but even I can't take issue with this. If they had charged you more than the RRP, sure, that'd pushing it, but if you didn't want to pay full price, you should have spent your own time looking for the bargain. ¯(ツ)/¯

You should definitely spend time trawling through Oxfam shops for books, if this annoys you.

Costs money and time to package and ship stuff. They should've at least removed the sticker though.
- Takes time and money to do that as well though, and I kinda feel like op would not have appreciated that markup

It could have been £300 and you will still complain and be the sucker for paying for that. Is the seller obligated to ship to you at a price of £2?
You could probably shop around a bunch of Oxfams to (maybe) get the book you wanted for cheap. Or you could also find discounted books at the Oxfam and list them for just £1 or 2 above the sticker price. Is that worth your time?
Like I get being upset at institutional practices like soft drinks costing companies a handful of pence per item when they charge £2.50 (or £4.50 at the cinema), and being stingy on the refills. Books on the other hand are a luxury item that (other than the textbook racket by publishers) you can go without.

64 comments