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.

Well known indie bookchain Well known indie bookchain, now located in the Pacific Northwest. I've never had any difficulties ordering items from the web from them. They were early pioneers of e-commerce, before the 'big gorrila'. Their strength is new and used books, especially academic and scientific publications. This family owned company is a well known collector of used books in North America.

Their shopping cart stalls on Paypal Their on line shopping cart is not accepting Paypal, after I meticulously filled in every box of info, I clicked paypal button and blank page appears stateing "missing token" nothing else..dead..stuck So I set up an account, put in all my address info in have everything in my shopping cart (1 new and 4 used books) select paypal then press continue and nothing happens except continue button turns grey.. no useful help options or FAQS about this either, extremely lame! Using a Dell PC, Windows 10 and current Firefox -no problems with any other on line vendors accepting Paypal

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.

Powell's did not pay me for the books I… Powell's did not pay me for the books I sent them for buyback. In fact, once the books were in the mail (using their label) I never heard from them again. I would recommend using one of the other buyback companies. This is not a business Powell's should be in. Had they been more expensive books, I would be furious.