Going, Going, Bought at Half.com for Half The $ or Less!
Written: Jul 26 '01 (Updated Feb 20 '02)
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The Bottom Line
So far so good. I had rated Cyberrebates very poorly and it is now out of business. I hope I am accurate in my rating of this great site.
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| Full Review |
Half.com is a website that offers products at a discounted rate. This is not an auction site. You don't have to bid for a product. You clearly know how many items there are and what you will pay for it. Not only do I have the book, Soul Stories by Gary Zukav, sitting next to me which I purchased for $6.35 including $2.25 for shipping, but I have also listed several books there as a seller.
I first learned about this site through epinions. If you have read more than a few reviews you may have received a pop up that will bring you to half.com. If you click “check latest prices” on a book, for example, you will get a list of online stores; one of them is half.com. Although I have checked many prices through this site I never used it myself until a reviewer passed on a “refer a friend” code. I will tell you more about that in a moment.
What can you buy?
They claim that over 50 million items are listed. The categories of those items are books, music, movies/dvds, games, computers, electronics, sporting goods and trading cards. Within each of these categories are sub categories, for example, in books you will find biography, mystery and romance and within sporting goods, baseball, camping, and golf to name a few. The home page tells you how to become a member, how to sell your items, your account, help desk and shopping cart.
Currently you can buy "Live In New York City", by Bruce Springsteen for $12.64. They give you the list price also of $24.97. Advertised also is Dean Koontz’s book, "From the Corner of His Eye," with a list price of $23.45. When you go to buy this book you will be given a choice as I did with Zukav’s book of what condition you want to buy it and the price will be reflected in that. The best price for Koontz’s book is $3.50 and the seller says that the dust jacket is worn but the book is like new. The highest price $5.92 and the seller says the pages and book are intact and in very good condition.
About buying and selling:
The seller is responsible for typing in the condition of whatever product he or she is selling. When I bought my book, I may have paid a few pennies more for a book with a description than a book whose seller put in nothing about the condition. My book is in excellent condition, in my opinion, but as the seller claimed, there is writing on the first blank page. Like new, very good and good are the 3 categories that are given in the book category. When you go to sell your product and click on which category your product falls in, half.com gives you a recommended price to sell it for. You can change that. They tell you the highest it is selling for and the lowest. There are also customer reviews for the products. Koontz’s book has been rated by 4 people and has a 4 rating out of 5.
Each category may have different rating guidelines but they are similar. They range in general from like new to unacceptable and this is explained very well in the help section.
You are told how many items of each product are in stock in each category. There might be 40 "From the Corner of His Eye" books available in the very good category and 50 in the like new category.
The site itself is very easy to navigate. As a seller you can type in multiple books, for example, by the ISBN on one page rather than having to enter them one at a time. As a buyer, it could not have been easier. I did, of course,have to give half.com my credit card.
As a seller I had a choice of being paid either by direct deposit or by check. I chose a check. I haven’t sold anything yet, however! There are no start-up, listing or monthly fees. What they do is take a commission off the selling price at the time of the sale. This is all explained in the help section.
The Help Section:
Since I found it so helpful I thought I would note that in a separate paragraph.
The top 5 help questions just to give you an example are these:
Is my information secure? How can I be sure about the condition of the things I'm buying? Where do I get all of the information about my book, CD, game or video? Where do I find the ISBN/UPC? How do I get paid for selling stuff? (from the website)
I can't think of any question not addressed here and I think half.com has answered them thoroughly.
Promotions:
1. "Download and install Half.com's Price Patrol and you can always be sure that you're not missing out on great deals at Half.com. If you should happen to visit other Internet retailers (we don't know why you'd ever want to do that), the Price Patrol will automatically alert you to Half.com's comparable prices for the specific item you're looking for.
As an added bonus, first-time buyers get a FREE $10 coupon off a $50 order* once you download Price Patrol. Your coupon code will be provided upon completion of the download." (from the website)
2. The "Pass The Bucks" program:
When you submit your friends' names and emails on the "Pass The Bucks" page, they will receive an email with a coupon code valid for $5.00 off their first order of $10.00 or more (not including shipping and handling) at Half.com. Every time one of your friends uses their "Pass The Bucks" $5.00 coupon at Half.com, you are given a coupon code that you can use to get $5.00 off a $10.00 order. This is what prompted me, as I said in the beginning, to buy the book. However, I did not know until I went to buy it that the $5.00 does not include the shipping charge. Since the shipping charge is $2.25 for each book and the books I wanted were very inexpensive, I opted to just buy the one book rather than having to pay perhaps over $6.00 in shipping charges for a $10.00 order.
Shipping:
The $2.25 is a fixed rate for books, music, movie and games. This money really adds up. I could see this as a major flaw in Half.com. but I understand why this has to be. I also know that the products are so reasonable - cheap - in many cases, that the shipping charge doesn't matter.
I could see this as one order being shipped to one address thus there should be one shipping charge. But it doesn’t work that way. Essentially it truly is 3 separate orders most likely from 3 different sellers all of whom have to pay money to ship the book. If there were only one shipping price divided by 3 people that wouldn’t cover the cost nor would Half.com be able to keep track of something like that. This did, however, stop me from purchasing more books at that time. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy additional products, though. The pass the bucks program just didn’t turn out to be attractive to me when I went to purchase Soul Stories.
Other products don't have fixed shipping charges. "When Half.com sends the seller an order notification, the desired shipping method will be included in that notification. Sellers must confirm an order within 2 business days of order notification. Upon confirmation, the seller is expected to ship the order to the buyer within 1 business day." (from the website)
Rating the Seller:
It appears that half.com takes their sellers seriously. After I received my book I had the opportunity of not only rating the condition of the book and its delivery time but also leaving a comment which I did. I rated the seller a 5 with the following comment, "My book arrived on time, in better condition than listed actually. It appears almost brand new. Thank you."
In summary, I had a great experience as a buyer using half.com and I have read from others that they have also. I do know someone who received a product in a condition not specified when she bought it and I believe is still struggling to figure out what to do about it. There is a question in the help area that addresses "seller/buyer communication," but apparently she was not satisfied with the result.
Based on my experience I would recommend half.com. The prices are fantastic. Personally I wouldn’t spend $224 on a Digital Olympus Zoom Camera which is being advertised without seeing it, but others especially those of you who are used to ebay (ebay, by the way, owns half.com) and other similar sites may.
It costs nothing to check out the site: www.half.com but be advised you will want to start going through all your “stuff” and try to sell it!
(P.S. I have noticed on many items at epinions various uses of the lower and upper cases of products and sites. Half.com is no different. In fact the site itself used the lower and upper case at different times, thus I did also!)
Recommended:
Yes
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