Buying Books and DVDs on Amazon

I am a seller on Amazon. I have been for a number of years now. I sell DVDs, VHS tapes, Books (hardback and paperback), and Magazines. I also buy on Amazon. I buy DVDs and Books. There is a technique to buying on Amazon that I want to take a moment and reveal to you. No tricks, simply things I have learned by both buying and selling at the site over the years.

When you decide to buy something on Amazon, let’s say a Book; in fact, let’s say you have decided to purchase “Kindred in Death”. This is one of the books in JD Robb’s sci-fi thriller/mystery books. We will now go to Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com
1) You are going to enter your title in the “search” box.
Several choices will, most likely, come back. You need to decide whether you are going to:
A) Buy a new book
B) Buy a used book
C) Buy a Kindle Book (hint: you need a kindle first)
Let’s buy it used.

2) Find the book on the list page and click on the type of book you wish. You can click on hardcover “used”. Right now it says, “Hardcover Used $1.66”.
That means that the lowest used price for the book is $1.66. Yes, you can salivate now! But, I would still read on. This is the easy part.

3) Now, something to be noticed here is that it says a “new” copy is only $1.49. While that is true, there are some things to be considered, so let’s go on.

4) There are now a list of different people/businesses selling this same book. The first few may have higher prices. That is because the “Prime” orders packaged and delivered by Amazon themselves are always listed first. If you skim past these you will get to the $1.66 book.

5) The book states it is $1.66 + $3.99 shipping and handling. All Amazon books have the added $3.99 price. That is the only addition to the regular price you pay. So, our total for this book would be $5.65. That is a very good price for a hardback book.

6) Next step is to see the condition. Here it says “Very Good”. The conditions range from “acceptable” to “used – like new”. “Very good” is one step down from the “like new”. This is also a good sign for the book.
You now have a good price and a good condition.

7) Look at the seller, but, more importantly, look at the percentage for the seller. This seller says “99%” and has 5 stars before it. The 99% is the amount of 4 and 5 stars the seller has been given by the people who buy books (all the books and DVDs, etc…sold by that one seller). I almost never buy anything below 98% when I am buying. If you think about it, what is being said is that in 4% of the cases (for a 96% seller), the order has had something wrong with it. That’s not acceptable to me, so I usually ignore all but 98% and up. I try to purchase 100% if it is only a few cents more. You can look down the list for this.

7) If you want to take it one step farther, left-click on the 99% and open it in a new window. About 1/2 down the screen on the right side is a table that looks like this:

___________________________
Feedback 30 days 90 days 365 days Lifetime
Positive      99%       99%        99%            99%
Neutral         1%          1%          0%              0%
Negative       1%          1%          0%              0%
Count      1800       5318     28120         42327
____________________
Very quickly, just look at the “30 days” and see that it is about 1% for 1800 purchased items for the “negative” feedback. This means that of 1800 items purchased in the last 30 days, only 18 have had problems rating them only a 3 star or less. I would think that is not too many so the book is, probably, going to be delivered on time and in good shape. I would buy this book.

8) I won’t go into the next detail, but, if you still want to “dig” deeper, you can click the “see all feedback” and go through the last several months or, at least, a week and see what the customers said. I have seen customers give a “1” to a seller merely because there was a small crack in the DVD case or something of this nature. I even had a buyer give me a “3” (I have only had 2 of these in years), because he “didn’t like the movie” – uh, not my fault.

9) That is the Amazon purchase in a nutshell. You can go from there and look at it for fun and practice without buying.

10) When you are all done, simply go to check out and purchase your items. You do have to have an account, but they are easy to set up. Amazon doesn’t use PayPal yet, so you need some type of card for it.

11) If you are buying a gift for someone, you can have it “gift wrapped” a lot of times and shipped right to their home. Even if you don’t gift wrap it, you can have it shipped to their home. I do that for my son, a lot, who lives out of state. It also arrives quicker when you ship it right to them. All you have to do is add their address to your “ship to” address and verify the payment when asked.

11) – Final step. As you buy a lot of items, you may find a seller or two whom you really know will do you well. There is a way to save them, but I haven’t looked hard into that. I keep a list of the few I really like and refer to that when I am buying. I have some customers who go to my storefront to buy items, because I have a 100% rating for several years. I know they do this because I have had customers pay quite a bit more for something I am selling rather than buy the cheapest. I do try, though, and most of the time can sell the cheapest or nearly so.
Here, I will get your “list” started – (This is, of course, mine):

_
Scott’s Stuff on Amazon

_
Go there an look it over. Practice looking through my storefront and selection. My only wish right now is that more people would rate me so that count would be higher. I sell a lot more than the count shows.
Have fun and save money!
Namaste,
Scott