I figured I’d put my new card to good use and get some other books I need at the Chapters online shop, since some of them are hard to find in the local stores. It was however, largely futile; most of the titles I was looking for were out of stock or ‘temporarily unavailable.’ Well, nuts.
Fortunately, Amazon recently opened up a Canadian branch of their online store, and after a quick check there all of them were available, though a few were in the ‘1-3’ week timeframe. A lot of them were cheaper than at Chapters even after the club discount. Hurray! But them I remembered how I got screwed around by Amazon before… The last time I ordered from them, they claimed it would ship in 1-2 weeks. After three weeks of waiting, I finally got an e-mail from them saying that they were sorry it was late but they were still working on it. A couple weeks after that, another notice arrived saying that they’d given up and cancelled the order. Was it just a really hard-to-get book? Not really, it was a fairly recent release and I then went and ordered the same book from Chapters and it was in my hands three days later.
There was also something suspicious about the shipping times listed. I had a book set aside in my ‘saved items’ section and it was listed as being available in 2-4 days. I was tempted to add it to the list, but upon clicking it for details, the detail page listed the shipping time as 1-4 weeks! A glitch in the system? Or was it deliberately misrepresenting the shipping time of a book to try and tempt me into picking it…
So, I’m not entirely sure I trust Amazon anymore. But then I can’t even order many of these titles from Chapters. So, for now I’ve gone ahead and placed the order through Amazon. This will be their second chance to either redeem themselves or confirm just how lousy they might be…
Instead of buying tech books all the time, Matt’s recently discovered O’Reilly’s online library. You have access to all O’reilly books for a monthly fee. Kind of nifty! The website is http://safari.oreilly.com/ in case you want to check it out. Might save you tons of money. :-)
It’s been tempting. Looks like they’ve got more than just O’Reilly books now and it would be handy for quick checks on obscure items or books I’d only need temporarily.
For stuff I’d reference a lot though, like an STL guide, APIs, etc., I still prefer to have a copy I can hold in my hands, browse quickly, throw at the wall… :-)
Mmm… Throwing hardcopy at walls… Fun for the whole family. :-)