Powells is one of my favorite things… Powells is one of my favorite things about living in Portland. Used to love getting lost for hours among the endless bookshelves. Now, during the lockdown, love the fact that I can order reading material on their website, and (almost completely) avoid Amazon. Getting ready to place another order today!

Powell's Bookstore is the worst Powell's Bookstore is the absolute worst online business you can imagine. They take your money and fail to send you books. They do not reply to emails. The link they provided to follow my order was a bad link. The web site will not let me log into their Web Site or change my password. They have convinced me to go back to Amazon, which is very sad.

Dishonest merchant -- keeps making… Dishonest merchant -- keeps making promises they don't keep with regards to book conditions, buying of used books, etc. Constantly change their own polices and then fail to follow said policies. We can no longer trust them, and their book selection seems to get worse and worse (they rarely if ever have books I'm looking for in stock, when nearly every other seller DOES have them in stock). Not worth the hassle with the slowwwwwwwww website either. Powells used to be ok to good; now they can't be trusted -- but aren't (yet) as sketchy as most Amazon 3rd party sellers. And Powells was smart enough to stop selling on Amazon, so maybe there is a very very faint hope they will finally improve their company, stop telling lies to customers, and make a genuine comeback... but sadly we've had to move on to more honest sellers who don't tell lies. We refuse to put up with blatant lies, so we will never use or visit Powells again.

Their website absolutely sucks for booksellers Their website absolutely sucks. After about 2 minutes of entering ISBNs of books to sell, it times out so that you have to start all over. If you don't completely finish your transaction in about 5 minutes, you have to start over. It's ridiculous.

Terrible business practices Terrible business practices. I recognize that in order to make money selling used books you need to get them for a decent price. However, this place is a gold mine. It's not just that they pay insultingly low prices for your books, it's that they're rude to you while they're doing it. They truly act like they're doing you a favor, and forget that without you selling back your books, they would be out of business. What's worse is that they have aggressively put every other mom-and-pop bookstore in the area out of business. Portland used to have a thriving used bookstore presence but Powell's has driven their competition completely out of existence. And they ripped off their customers with a contemptuous eye-roll while doing it. There are alternatives, albeit mostly online (Thanks in part to the business practices of companies like Powell's). I get that there is a thrill in hunting through thousands of books in order to find a diamond in the rough, but for ethical reasons, I will be going elsewhere in the future. Don't waste your time.