Isabel B.

I started using the site more than 10 years ago, back when it was a (really) good deal. At that time, the service was free; the only cost for trading a book was the necessary postage. Over time, in order to sustain the business model, it's become a membership site, plus a lot of nickel-and-diming... which means that the value delivered has gone down significantly.

That was still okay with me because the basic service -- buying used books for a significant discount -- is something I value. So I was fine ponying up the membership fee, and even donated a little extra to the site on occasion for maintenance costs. (Even though the website has barely changed since launched, and *jeez* could it use a redesign... it's not user-friendly or modern at all. And none of the promised services, like a web app, ever materialized. But never mind.)

I didn't start to become alienated as a customer until relatively recently, after having a few issues with the site that required customer service intervention. AND OMG, THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE IS TERRIBLE. The "librarian" -- I don't think this is one person; it's probably a team -- is consistently and aggressively rude. They don't seem to value their customers at all... ie, everything is framed as the customer's fault (even when it's not), and they're super trigger-happy with disabling accounts. Basically any problem -- emails suddenly aren't getting through? Post office returned your book? Etc. -- will result in the account being indefinitely disabled, even if this makes no sense at all, even if this interrupts a conversation with another member regarding a delivery issue, even if you have other trades going on that you have to be able to track, and even if having the account being disabled *makes it harder to identify and resolve the problem*. They have one solution to any problem: disable the account, thereby making everything more difficult... and never ever accept responsibility for problems that they caused.

I currently have about 100 credits built up across the years (because their inventory is so sluggish; it's very easy to get credits, and slow work to find anything worth spending them on). But I'm so tired of dealing with their customer service that I'm planning to donate them all and close my account before the account renews.

My advice is to avoid PBS at this point; they're not a good deal anymore. Alternatives include BookMooch (not the best inventory either; but far better site functionality, and so far I've never needed to use their customer service) and BooksFreeSwap (just signed up today; but can't imagine that they could be worse than PBS).