Half Price Books Employers do not know how to buy back books from customers. Better training should be enforced! Dallas Texas

I used to be an employee of Half Price Books in the last few years and can state that the training an employee goes through in order to learn to buy back books from customers is in need of serious repair. When I was trained to buy back books, I was given a few ancient video's to watch which were out of date and did not relate to the merchandise current at the time. Following these video's were some booklets I was given to read and sign and then I was let loose in the buy area to watch and learn from other employees. 

What I learned from these previous experiences is that the video's and booklets were out of date and didn't relate to the act of buying back books. The website all employees refer to when buying back books is limiting (Abe books) as other websites about written material is out there but not recommended to use as we were taught that we must not take too long on evaluating a customers books so therefore many customers got offers that were not correct and I can tell you that the time I worked there I saw more frustrated customers than I saw happy ones. 

Now that I have this experience as a bookseller but am no longer working at Half Price Books, I've never been too eager to resell to them if I need to sell books but recently I was moving and had to get rid of a lot of my books, records and games and so I grudgingly took them to HPBs. Now I looked up (using my previously learned HPBs buyer skills) the items I was going to sell and could see I had things that were on demand due to the time of year and which wer also selling well but for several boxes of books, records, video games and dvds I was given the offer of less than $15 for all of it! 

The boy who evaluated my items did not use the computer as I watched him. He glanced rapidly at all the items and scribbled on a notebook. I realize he may feel he is a pro at the buying process but come on! Even I know that pro's often need to step back a bit and humbly check their notes via the wonderful research tool called a computer! 

I took back a few items to sell them elsewhere as I knew they were worth more than what he wanted to offer me. So I am putting in this report as I think it needs to be said and reported from someone who has been on both sides of the buying experience. I believe Half Price Books is not worth the time to take merchandise there to sell as their employees are clearly not trained properly and I don't care how many flats are down in the basement of various types of books, everything needs to be better evaluated and broken down so that they stop offering so very little to the customers who often are selling up everything due to a major life event and nothing hurts more than having a big company like Half Price Books give you next to nothing for things you felt (& in some cases like previous employees, know) is worth more. 

My advice to customers who are considering selling to Half Price Books is to first look your books up online and do some of your own research to find out what they are selling for because selling them via a well known website like Amazon is going to net you more money than selling at HPBs. 

My advice to Half Price Books is please revamp your training in the buy area as its behind the times and you really need to change things. Also to Half Price Books, when someone is selling something to you that is priced in another currency then perhaps you should research the supply and demand of this item in both its origin country and this country before you offer nothing for it.