Web Site Review: Paperbackswap.Com / Swapadvd.Com

Swapadvd.com which is operated under Paperbackswap.com is a website which allows members to swap used DVD's in exchange for credits. You can buy postage through the site and you can even buy insurance for the items you ship in case they are lost. For each item you ship, you earn a credit and you can use the credit to ask for other available items that users have listed. If there is a high demand for a DVD, you go on a waiting list. You can transfer cash balances onto your account and use it as you need it to buy postage and/or insurance. It seems like good sense to buy the insurance, otherwise you can be out the item you shipped and the shipping costs.

For book lovers such as me, they also have paperbackswap which is very appealing. It works the same way except with books. The sites are treated separately, and you will need separate accounts on each which will have separate credits and funds...supposedly.

The company according to the Better Business Bureau is operated out of Georgia and has eight employees. A common problem reported on their forums is the post office not always scanning items, hence needing to depend on the honesty of people to mark an item as arrived to earn your credit...unless you have insurance.

My Mistake

While the concept of the Web sites seems like a good idea, customer service does not seem to have set policies that they follow. I did not mark a couple of swapped DVD's that I received as arrived right away and I profusely apologized and owned up to my mistake. My busy schedule caused me to make a bone headed move. The punishment following the incident seemed not to match the mistake

My Loss of Funds

As a result of this blunder, they decided to retract all of my credits that I had earned through items I had shipped using their postage and insurance if the members had not marked the items as received. I asked them where it says in their help docs that insured items can indeed become uninsured. If I knew that was the case, then I would have saved myself the extra .47 cents per transaction I was paying for the simple peace of mind with each swap. They never told me where it was in their help docs, but they continued to refer to the one incident where I made a mistake even though it was not related to this new matter.

Then I noticed that my cash balance of $2.86 cents had turned into -$100 on the DVD swapping site. They explained that the negative was to discourage me from buying insurance through them. I thought that was odd. Why would I want to buy insurance from them again considering that they didn't honor it for me before?

My question to them was simple: when would I be issued my refund of $2.86 cents for the cash balance they took. I know it is not a mind blowing amount but it was a balance I had put on for future use. Since when can someone keep money without anything in exchange? I found out that I wouldn't be issued a refund, and they then cited how I had made a past mistake with marking the items as if that was relevant to losing my cash credit.

Also, as a result of them extracting the credits for past insured transactions, I was left with a -14 credit balance and the loss of the money I had entrusted with them. To make my balance break even, I would have had to then trade at least 14 more of my items, using more postage, with nothing in exchange.

My Inquiries

I looked into these transactions from which I had lost my credits and I started to pick them apart. The first one was an easy one. They took away a credit because a member never marked an item as arrived, but that was because I had damaged the item by mistake on my way to the post office. I had immediately notified the other member of my expresso mishap and I had issued them a refund. It was all documented right there on my transaction list in black-and-white.

I waited for them to answer that one before working my way through the others with them. Their response was that I did not contact the site that I would be issuing the refund so my mistake is the other member's gain. I asked if they even looked at my transactions, and they said that it did not matter because the matter was closed. Essentially, they saw that someone was getting a second refund, something the other member did not even ask for, and the site still refused to give me back the credit.

For some other transactions from which I was docked credit, by the way did I mention I had paid insurance on these credits, the tracking number showed the items had indeed arrived. I pointed out these incidents out but they said that unless the member marks the item as received, the items will remain categorized as "lost."

Good thing I had bought insurance...oh wait! I asked them if they were accusing me and the post office of lying and if perhaps the members had simply overlooked marking the items. They then scolded me for some of the items arriving "late." Huh, arriving late? I am being charged credits because the items never got there according to this site, so how do they know they were late? Oh, right, the tracking numbers which were doing me no good.

As far as items being late, the postal service sometimes scans items late or not at all. It is not unusual to get a book or a DVD that has never been scanned. This is a constant thread in their forums and they even admitted it happens and hence why they offer insurance. Except, they refused to honor the insurance I bought or to refund me the cost of buying it through them.

Some of the other items were not scanned at all, which does happen. Essentially I should have been covered by the insurance. Did I mention I had paid for insurance? They admitted that they know this happens but then told me how I had made a mistake earlier. This was their response to me no matter what issue I brought up like I no longer had rights. At this point I was losing hope about getting any credits back, especially since they did not even work with me over the documented double refund.

My Report to the BBB and The Taking of My Paperbackswap.com Account afterwards

I thought that the situation was peculiar so I reported the site to the Better Business Bureau in order to see if we could resolve it. I mean we are talking about used DVDs here not nuclear arms, why not get a third party to help us reach a resolution, right?

The day they received my complaint, they closed all of my accounts including the paperbackswap.com account which was in good standing and never in dispute, preventing me from getting my funds or book swapping from the paperback site. The account had ten book credits on it and a cash deposit balance of over a dollar. Essentially I lost another cash balance and more credits.

On their message as to why the account was closed, they cited how I reported them to the BBB even though I had previously admitted I was wrong. I had admitted I was wrong on one issue, but I had reported them for the actions they took as a result, leading me to lose fourteen credits and my money. Why would filing with the BBB be a reason to close another account and to take even more assets? I thought I was free as a consumer to use such sites; after all they are a registered member with the Bureau.

The Parting Words

The last message I received from paperbackswap.com and swapadvd.com was that I owed them those negative 14 credits, which was what I was disputing in the first place with the BBB and they said that they owed me nothing: not the cash balances or the credits I had with them.