Half Price Books Reviews

Wished I could have worked there longer!

HPB presents itself as a down to earth, good willed, customer service oriented business, it’s too bad that it’s all a lie. They claim they are fair to their customers. When buying books, the database makes an offer of .50 cents for a book that can be sold anywhere between $14.99 - 34.99, that’s not exactly right or fair, is it? Employees are told not to change the price given, hit enter and continue to the next item to scan. They tell you they will recycle or donate anything that they are not buying or intend to sell. Another lie. HPB hasn’t had recycling service for years. Anything not bought or donated goes straight to the dumpster. They will not protect you or your rights from harassing, belligerent customers. The customers money is much more important than you as an employee. These types of customers are never dealt with and will continue to shop and continue their terrible behavior at your expense. Management: The corporate office has little to no communication with the districts until something goes majorly wrong, by then it’s way too late to fix. Store management is chosen out of personal preference NOT education or experience. They have no idea how to run a retail store nor how to effectively manage and motivate staff to their highest efficiency. They are paid literally .50 cents more an hour than regular staff. If you offer suggestions that would make things more efficient and better overall, you are ignored. HPB does not take care of its older locations, only expanding and creating new ones. The network is outdated and incredibly slow,this affects registers and credit card transactions which fail from time to time or take minutes to process after the transaction is over. They still use IE as a browser, a security risk. You are better off checking the shelves physically than waiting on the system to tell you the status of the book your searching for. It’s like trying to do your job with one hand tied behind your back. They recently have been focusing on more online sales through their website or Amazon. This means you are expected to ask every customer for their email address for marketing purposes. This while also getting so many Search and Ship orders per week beyond all the other duties you will have. If you do not meet the quota of 5 a week then it will reflect negatively on you. I fail to see why employees are expected to do marketing’s job for them. Hounding a customer to do a search and ship, a service that most customers don’t have knowledge of or want and then making them wait 7-14 business day for their book is an eternity and quite frankly ludicrous. HPB is not Amazon and never will be. If you still decide to apply after reading all this, remember this company threw 2100 of its 2700 employees under the bus during this pandemic. Cutting them off from funds and insurance in the most desperate time in recent history. I was an employee of 10+ years, I never made anywhere near 30k a year. I worked weeknights, weekends, holidays, did extra time and wasn’t even paid out my full vacation time accrued when laid off. Do not expect your experience to be any better. Why are they currently open and subjecting their employees to possible infection? One word: Money. They do not care about you only what you will do for them. This company does not deserve to survive the current circumstances.