A Bad Situation Leads to a New Favorite Website

I related this story on the Geek Dads @ Home podcast a few days ago, but I wanted to write about it here because it’s such a great story.

Checking your credit card statements regularly is a good thing. In my case, I was able to catch a fraudulent charge a week after it happened. I don’t check the statements daily, but I do try to look at them once a week – we only have two cards, so there’s no reason not to. I noticed a charge for $217.00 to an online bookstore called Better World Books. I knew that I didn’t buy anything from them, and my wife confirmed that she hadn’t, either.

I called up Better World Books, and without even telling the rep anything more than, “I was looking at my credit card statement…” he knew why I was calling. It seems that several fraudulent charges from several sources had already been caught and dealt with. He was quick to assure me that the charge would be taken care of and he reminded me that I’d need to have my card reported stolen. Fortunately, this was the only fraudulent charge on my account.

After I got off the phone with him, I decided to see what Better World Books is. Just another online bookseller? An Amazon clone? It turns out that Better World is far cooler than any other online booksellers I’ve come across, and here’s why:

They’ll take virtually any book you’ve got off your hands for free or better. Here’s what I mean. You can enter the ISBNs of any books you’d like to get rid of at the Better World website, and the system will tell you that it will be accepted either as a donation or as a buy. If it’s a donation, Better World will pay the shipping required for you to send the book to them. You need only supply a box. If it’s a buy, Better World will still provide you a shipping label, but they will also send you a payment (by check, PayPal or another method). I punched in the ISBNs of about 25 books, was offered $10 for one title, $3 for another, and the rest were donations. I then printed out the shipping labels and sent them off. The unwanted books are out of my hair, and I’ve got $13 coming to my PayPal account.
They support global literacy efforts. Every time you purchase from Better World or send them a book, they make a donation to a global literacy charity of your choice. They offer half a dozen or so to choose from. This is the core of their business, their reason for existing. Other booksellers will be always be bigger (Amazon, for one) but other booksellers have profits as their driving force. Better World Books has literacy concerns as their driving force, and uses their profits to reach their goal of improved global literacy. As I write this, they’ve donated over $6.6 million to literacy efforts.
They have an affiliate program. Send traffic to the Better World website and they will thank you with a small commission. Links in this article are affiliate links.
Free shipping in the U.S. Seriously.

Registering an account is free, shipping is free, and they have an extensive selection of new and used books from nearly every genre imaginable – and oh yeah, they raise money to educate people around the world. Sounds like a winner to me.

Please, check them out.