To buy or not to buy- that is seriously my dilemma

In my last post, I talked about going to a book fair and stocking up on more books. As luck would have it, I never made it to that fair for reasons I just don't remember now. ANYhoo, on my last trip to India, I discovered a few sites that sold books online. I've always maintained that browsing through books in a bookstore is an experience that's an ever-changing one. And one that I have always relished although in the past 3 years, I've had to be quicker in deciding what I wanted to buy because my kid doesn't understand what's so interesting about books that don't have any pictures inside! On the flip side, after I shelled out 5000 bucks (with a 10% discount thanks to DC books) in December at the DC bookstore not far from my house, even I had to admit that the soaring rates of novels were a tad too much for a bookworm like me. Add to that my mother's comment of ' You spent 5000 rupees of BOOKS? I could have bought 2 nice salwars with that!'. And you can understand why I was left feeling more stupid than happy with my purchase.

Anyways, I discovered a site called www.uread.com which claimed to give fantastic discounts on books of all genres. After some general surfing, I wondered why I had never thought about buying books online before. Of course, maybe because it's an Indian site, the prices are different. Am not so sure that Amazon would have worked out as cheaply for me on the other hand. The bottom line is that every book (and they have a fantastic range of I like to think all the books on the planet) had a minimum of 15% discount on the selling price. When I glanced through the books I had purchased from the DC store, I realised that I could have saved a minimum of 1000 bucks. Besides, I have the luxury of ordering what I want from the site, they'll courier it across to me and I can even choose to pay after the delivery is made. How cool is that??

So, I did make 2 purchases from uread.com. The prompt service encouraged me to buy from them again, only that the second time around I wasn't as thrilled with the service they had to offer. Just when I had made out a cheque to them, their customer rep gives me a call and says ' Why not deposit the payment directly in our Axis bank account? It'll be faster and we'll process your order within hours.' ( Unfortunately, the only 2 Axis bank branches were each a good 2 hours away from me. And as irony would have it, after the entire order-delivery issue was sorted out, a 3rd Axis branch opened directly opposite my house. Luck I tell you, Grrrrrr) So, I beg my dad who has become extremely finicky about LENDING his credit card to his daughters to please please conduct this one transaction online for me. Now, when you're the beggar, you can't be the chooser as well. So I had to wait 2 miserable days till dad finally kept aside 5 minutes to purchase the books for me. You'd think my troubles were over, but wait, the page which shows that the transaction was successful, didn't come at all. And although I don't want to tell my non internet savvy dad that there could be a goofup on the part of the site, secretly am praying that I don't have to repeat the entire process again!

And guess what? The customer rep tells me oh so calmly, that the website was undergoing some updates so they would have to get back to me on whether they had received my payment or not. Which website in the world allows online transactions if they know it probably won't go through in the first place? Anyways, they did manage to trace my payment and by then they had messed up my order too. 3 books which I had deleted from my wish list magically appeared in my shopping cart. Then in order to gnaw at whatever few grey cells I had, I was unable to stay logged on for more than 2 minutes. So I actually wasted 5 hours sitting like the hunchback of notre- dame at my laptop and struggling to edit my purchases. By then, I was furious enough to bang my laptop up and down as well (but thank goodness I didn't, because that would have just been entirely my loss!)

And then, maybe as punishment for all the mails I sent them, they didn't courier me my purchases all at once either. I realised too late that they didn't have 2 books in their warehouse and that I would have to wait longer for it to reach me. After you complain and tear your hair out for a period of time, there suddenly comes a phase when you become calm and you just can't be bothered anymore! And that's what happened to me too. By then I had lost the excitement of receiving my books and I couldn't have cared less if the postman decided to flick one for himself or if the Loch ness monster decided to add one of my purchases to her collection. In the end, I did get my books, but they weren't worth all that tension and unnecessary stress. Add to that, a nagging voice which reminds me that I wouldn't have had to put up with the same experience at a bookstore. A terrible catch 22 situation to be in, isn't it?