Barnes & Nobles wants me to pay them $25 each year for a "membership card" that will get me 40% off Best Sellers and 20% off most of the other stuff. They also toss point of sale discount stickers on many new arrivals and other titles that are not in the top ten. For some reason, they seem to apply the sticker so that it covers part of the title or subtitle - just to annoy me.
So, if you don't buy their membership, you pay $25.99 for a $25.99 list price book. If the one you want happens to have a 20% off sticker on it, you can pay $20.79. If you do buy their membership, you can pay $16.37 at the store on on their website. I'm not sure how they do the math. That in itself is annoying. Hey - $16.37 doesn't seem like a completely raw deal. If you buy several books at once, the BN pitch starts to make more sense. If you buy $125 worth of books, the membership will pay for itself. At some point, provided you are a prolific consumer of books, it's not the worst deal ever.
I don't want to carry your card around with me. I have enough baggage. At the very worst, you should give it away for free. I'm not even sure free is cheap enough. You should pay me to carry that thing around. It might make sense at some point, but it tastes lousy having to pay.
So I locate the same book at Amazon.com. It takes me a few seconds and I can find it by entering the title: part of the title (only one word will work) or the author, or even one of the author's other titles (let's just say it's easier than hunting around the store). The $25.99 book is $15.59 right up front at Amazon. Gee, that's a curious amount. 40% off the original $25.99 represents a discount of $10.40. This would suggest that the BN member price should be $15.59 just like Amazon. But it isn't BN is $16.37 for members - such a deal. Oh and you still pay for shipping.
Well anyway, if you use Amazon with any frequency, it's not hard to figure out how to get free standard shipping and even expedited shipping for free. Yup - I know the store eliminates shipping, but so what. When was the last time a book purchase was an emergency? The wait time for shipping is as little as two days (for free).
If I need something pronto and it is available at Barnes & Noble and I'm in the mood for a Starbucks $3 coffee (Venti redeye), I guess I'd go there. Other than that, Amazon wins. Oh yes.
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