Earlier this week I ordered a book, Moneyball, from half.com. It was listed as being in very good condition and priced at 89 cents. About a day later, I heard from the seller. Whoops, they said, they didn’t actually have the book. They gave me two options: either choose a different book from their inventory, or have them refund the order. I chose neither. I replied, “I want the title I ordered at the quality I ordered at the price I ordered.” In other words, I’m saying that it is their obligation to find a new copy for their inventory and ship it to me even if it means they lose money on the deal. That seems fair to me. Heck, I think it should be the half.com policy: if a seller suddenly realizes they don’t have the product they listed for sale, then they should be obligated to buy the next cheapest similar item and then sell it to me at the price originally listed by the seller.
I haven’t heard back from them. We’ll see how this goes.
FOLLOW UP: Having just read The Double D’s comment below, I realized that there is an update to this. Several days after I made my request, I received another email from the bookseller. However, this email was from someone else, and it looked like my original email had gone through several people. Anyway, the new email said basically the same thing as the first one, “would you like a refund or a different book.” I again explained my position, being very careful not to sound like a smartass. After a couple more days I heard back, they said they’d found a copy and ship it right to me.
I have to do basically this if I fail to meet a spec an engineer puts out. The kicker is that if I do not find a replacement for what I said I would provide, I am majorly pissing off a repeat customer who will likely not repeat for some time. In this ass hats case, he knows you probably aren’t going to come after him for $.89 and won’t be a repeat customer anyway. Most likely, you are out the cash and unless you want to get him out of principle, out more for your time than the lost cash if you go any further. Just be sure to bash the seller on the site.