Friday, July 23, 2010

Lulu, Paypal and Lost Books

A recurring complaint with Lulu seems to be books that don't arrive.  And Lulu's position is that unless you choose a courier-type method of delivery with tracking, they will not refund the cost of the missing books.  A user on the Lulu forums suggests that so long as you pay via Paypal you can dispute the charge and have it reversed.  The reasoning here seems sound based on Paypal's website. After all the attachment of tracking information is possible with the mailing services Lulu uses, it seems they just choose not to do so. Just remember that you must open a dispute after 7 days but before 45 days (from the time of purchase).  After 45 days Paypal still encourages reporting but will not open a dispute.

And while we are on the subject of Lulu, a recent Lulu blog states "Several of our forum mainstays like Keith Dixon and veinglory have chimed in with suggestions for Mark."  I stated in a reply to this post that I am not a mainstay of the forum, in fact while I still read the forums I have not posted there in months and plan to never to post there again.  The powers that be helpfully deleted this comment after a few days and left the incorrect statement on the post intact.  The reason for my participation boycott being, should anyone care, that Lulu CEO Bob Young saw fit to launch an attack on the forums against myself and several other previously loyal Lulu-ers based on our criticisms of several recent changes at Lulu including removal of the ability to search exclusively for the Lulu-published (self-published) books lost amidst a plethora of third-part material (with a buggy search system).  Right now I have no idea what is going on with the Lulu site where third-party material seems have quietly vanished away again?

3 comments:

Darcia Helle said...

It seems to me that this policy allows Lulu to get away with simply not sending packages if the authors haven't paid the extra for tracking. I find it odd that missing packages is a recurring trend with this particular company. What a horrible customer service policy!

Shannon Yarbrough said...

I experienced this once last year when I actually received the package but all of the books were damaged. and it wasn't damage from poor packaging or shipping. All of the books had the same defect to them in the same place, so it probably happened during the printing process. Lulu did replace all of the books but advised that if it happened again, it wasn't cost efficient for them to replace the books again and that they weren't "really" responsible for damages caused during printing! That's when I moved my book to CreateSpace and have had no problems thus far.

DED said...

Lulu did replace all of the books but advised that if it happened again, it wasn't cost efficient for them to replace the books again and that they weren't "really" responsible for damages caused during printing!

Yikes! Isn't that a bit like a car company saying that it's not responsible for defects created during manufacturing? I'm sure they'd love to do away with recalls.