Mildly Infuriating

You chose to buy it at that price. What does it matter what the original price was or how much the seller made? You thought the price was fair, had the choice to not buy it or buy it somewhere else.

This isn't like scalpers buying up items, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices for profit. This is just plain old capitalism.

Presumably the price also included shipping and handling fees, since you bought it online. So in the end the seller probably made just a couple of quid, he deserves to get paid for what he does no?

It is tacky to leave the sticker on there with the lower price, but you are the one who paid 12£. How does it matter what they paid? If they search for books to resell at a profit, that's time spent, risk taken, and money earned.

It always sucks to know you paid more than the seller did - but that just means Oxfam undervalued the book.

Having worked in one, charity shops tend to have a habit of either really undervaluing or overvaluing their donated goods - cause the people who actually set the prices mostly just guess based on looks and nothing more. Only if an item looks expensive will they do any research, and even then never really enough.

Ok, don't buy it online then go get it from the thrift store yourself. Oh that takes valuable time and effort? Guess that's why it was marked up, peoples' time is worth money.

So you're annoyed that someone (who took the time to go to a charity shop, list the book online, and ship it to you) charged you the RRP for the book, that you didn't have to buy from them?

I hope you have the same kind of energy for when mega-corporations charge anything from tens to thousands of pounds for products that often cost single pounds or even pennies to manufacture (due to underpaying for labour and materials that were in turn manufactured by underpaid labour as well), and the snowballing impact they have on the rest of the economy (by pricing out smaller companies, monopolising industries, avoiding tax, and so on).

The person you bought this from likely works for themsleves, trolling charity shops all day for bargains, and almost certainly pays tax on their income. I'm as anti-capitalist as they get, but even I can't take issue with this. If they had charged you more than the RRP, sure, that'd pushing it, but if you didn't want to pay full price, you should have spent your own time looking for the bargain. ¯\(ツ)/¯

You should definitely spend time trawling through Oxfam shops for books, if this annoys you.

Rofl. Imagine being mildly infuriated that someone marked up a bargain bin purchase by $10 to cover their time and effort to make it available to you to buy from the comfort of your home.

Why don't you spend your own day rummaging through thrift stores for it next time?

listen, you paid what you thought it was worth to you that's how retail works they buy product, then sell them at a markup you buy products from them only if you think it's worth the price they're asking you get the product, they get the money

A used book for 12£ is maybe 8€ more than I normally spent on used books.

Putting the £ sign after the value is in itself mildly infuriating.

Most book sellers on the Internet roam around, buy used books, cut them to make them look new and then sell it as new.

For those curious:

The book is Entangled Life - How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

Bought where on the internet? I think that context is quite relevant tbh.

Costs money and time to package and ship stuff. They should've at least removed the sticker though.

1•99

It's crazy, right?

The whole world's gone sideways.