I just wanted to share with you all a situation I’ve been going through in regards to a book I bought through a private seller on Amazon. The book was called The Magicians Tables : A Complete Book of Correspondences by Alan Richardson . It is a pretty rare book, not published anymore and can be pretty pricey to buy. It has been recommended by one of my favorite YouTubers Ashera Star Goddess (a really cool witchy YouTuber) and has received really good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads . So taking this into consideration, I was so excited to purchase this book for my collection thinking it would be a helpful addition to my witchy library.

After giving the purchase a lot of thought, on August 10th 2018 I decided to purchase my own copy of the Magicians Tables from a company called USA MART . At the time USA MART had the cheapest price out of all the other sellers at $91.64 CAD . It was pricey but I decided i’d make the investment and give myself a late birthday present. There was a sketchy red flag that I totally was blind to. Weirdly, the book was expected to arrive the latest by Oct 3rd 2018.. I don’t understand why I didn’t think about this, which makes me feel disappointed in myself. How does it take a book 3 months to be shipped to you? Especially when it is an American company and you live in Canada? I beat myself up over this all the time. I am too trusting, and stupidly patient. I guess I just really wanted to have that book in that moment. Being a loyal Amazon customer and using PayPal for all of my purchases I put all my trust into this seller, foolishly thinking to myself “oh it’ll be fine. Amazon is a huge well known company and  wouldn’t allow a seller to scam me.” So I forgot about my purchase until October rolled in, and when October 3rd passed by, I continued to wait giving USA MART the benefit of the doubt. Around the same time there was a postal strike in Canada, and I was still trying to make excuses for the soon to be discovered no show of my book. 

The first message I sent out was on October 16th 2018. This was well over the date that the book was expected to arrive. The email was sent out a lot later than it should have, but I lost track of time due to a lot of things happening in my personal life. 

When I sent this email, Amazon let me know to give USA MART an additional 5 business days to respond. I kept checking for responses here and there. Apparently I missed their response back to me, which was strange because when I was checking frequently and there was nothing under my Amazon messages. I sent another message back to them saying similar things that I had sent on my original message. Waited around a week for them to respond, then decided to call Amazon customer service. Amazon customer service was quite helpful during the phone call. They let me know about the message that I missed from USA MART (oct 17th 2018), which said that they had no other copies of the book that they could give me, but they were  open to giving me a full refund. I was so happy, and ready to put everything behind me. Amazon’s customer service wrote USA MART back agreeing on my behalf that I would gladly accept my refund. 

In response to Amazon’s Customer service contacting USA MART, they responded back with another message that read this. 

I did what they suggested by contacting my post office. The post office said that there was no package there waiting to be picked up. I waited till November 5th to see if the book would arrive. It did not. I sent a request for my refund on November 7th 2018. 

USA MART responded back the same day with a message about issuing me a refund . If I had any issues to let them know. In the message it states to please wait up to 5 business days for the refund. 

Again I waited another 5 business days for this refund to magically appear back into my bank account. It didn’t. Shocker. I sent another message to them. I responded on November 20th 2018,  another late response but life got busy again. 

This was the last message that I sent, nothing was ever sent back to me as a response as of today (December 10th 2018). A week later from my last message to them,  I decided to call Amazon’s customer service as a final try to get my refund. I explained my whole story to the woman I was speaking to. The call seemed really rushed and she kept assuring me that all would be handled. I have yet to still see a refund on my bank statements or credit card. I even checked PayPal to see if it would show there. No such luck. 

I wanted to share this with you all because sellers like this should be held accountable. I don’t understand why Amazon has not done anything to remove or at least give USA MART some kind of penalty. I hope to warn others that are too trusting like myself, of the false security that Amazon provides its customers with its private sellers. It’s the wild west once you decide to trust a independent seller. Make sure to always read the reviews on the sellers page. Read their return policy. Be wary of anything suspicious such as a long 2-3 month wait for a item to be shipped to you. If you really want something, do more research on other options to buy from.  Be smart, especially if you are buying something expensive. 

I want to leave additional findings that I found when looking on their review page on Amazon. This is the page I should have read before I bought from them . These are other comments from people who haven’t received their items from this seller. There’s about a 24% negative review percentage, which is alarmingly pretty high. There was one comment that I found that stood out from the rest. “Never received item. I suspect they sell items first then try to obtain them (or not), and with very long delivery times hope you just forget about the stuff for which you were charged up front.” 

I agree with this suspicion. I’ve thought of similar things myself. USA MART is running quite the operation, selling rare book items, having them expected to arrive months later, and keeping up with the illusion of good customer service. Stay away from this book seller. It’s not worth the trouble.

I want to post more of the reviews I found. A lot of them are positive, where people do actually receive their items. Lucky them. The amounts of negative reviews scattered around the feedback section show me that this issue of missing books or extremely late arrivals are a common thing. 

Oh and apparently they’re selling another copy of the book that should of been mine. So when they say that they have “no more additional copies of that I can send you” that’s a flat out lie.