Half Price Books — Attraction in Columbus

More like full priced books, and prepare to foot the bill while their employees are trained at your expense. I wanted to like Half Price Books because I do love book stores, but my experience at this location was anything but pleasant.

Throughout the store I noticed them charging more for used items than I can pay to get them brand new nearly anywhere else. This ranged from blu-ray/DVD you could find new in the $5 bins at any of the mass retail stores, being sold used and marked up to $8-10. What didn't fit this description was being sold at the top value asked nearly anywhere else if the items were new. For an example they have the complete series of the Wire used and were asking $70-80—a quick Google search shows that the top price being asked online is exactly that much, if you purchased it new. The books, vinyl, board games, and basically everything else in the store was all priced at its top dollar, which is fine maybe if the store wasn't literally called half price books (records magazines). Regardless I still desired supporting my local book store instead of giving more business to one of the mass retail stores out there. With that in mind, I managed to find an assortment of impulse items I wanted. So complain about pricing all I want but I admittedly did make the decision to purchase them. When checking out is when any remaining hope of a normal shopping experience ended. The lady checking me out made a mistake after half of my order was already charged onto a prepaid Visa gift card. She needed to call the manager, whose solution was to refund it back to the gift card. This took 10-15 minutes and ultimately ended up in a large line forming over something that was completely their mistake; but it still turned me into the guy holding up the line for way too long. I ultimately had to use my gas money to pay for these impulse purchases I would've never purchased if not for that gift card, and this was 6-7 hours from home.

Edit : At first I never actually received the refund, but after 10-14 days it eventually did...

Honestly, I would avoid this store at all costs. I brought in a bunch of books to sell and most of them were unread. I get that that doesn’t happen everyday, but I have a shopping problem. I don’t buy expensive handbags or shoes, I buy books I tell myself I’m gonna read and then never get around to it. I apologized to the customer service rep at the desk profusely because I had so many books, and he was nice about it, but after all the books were counted, the manager on duty was incredibly rude. She interrogated me in the middle of the store and escorted me to the check out desk. She huffed and puffed to the cashier, yelling at her that the she’d have to get more money for the till. She accused me of stealing books for resale. Then she told me that if I ever came back to her store I’d need to bring a receipt for all the items I wanted to sell. Truthfully she doesn’t have to worry about me coming back to her store again or any other Half Price Book store for that matter after the way I was treated. What’s more, if she was so worried about me trying to resell stolen books I would have been more than happy to pull up the receipts on my phone at the store, but she didn’t bother to do anything but be rude and make accusations. I’ll be encouraging any friends and family that I know who shop at HPB to go elsewhere from now on and if you’re thinking about selling books to HPB, I’d encourage you to reconsider. Use eBay or another...

Whether you're buying or selling you'll have a great experience here. Very nice, friendly, and knowledgeable staff! They have a huge selection (you'll probably be surprised, like I was, at how many books they have) wide hours so you can browse as long as you like! For selling books to this store, of which I have more experience, it's a very simple process. No matter what amount of books you bring in they will be finished going through them and have an offer for you in under 15 minutes every time. Also, all of the books they don't purchase will end up being donated which I think is petty cool. I've brought in 20 books all the way up to just under 1000 at once and it's crazy how fast and consistent they are! Just please don't expect a ton of money or get mad/upset when you think they gave you a low offer. You have to remember that you are selling dusty old unwanted books that you had lying around your house to a discount bookstore with employees, overhead, and needs to make a profit. Be grateful that you are getting SOME amount of money as it would be very difficult to get cash money for your old books any other...