You chose to buy it at that price. What does it matter what the original price was or how much the seller made? You thought the price was fair, had the choice to not buy it or buy it somewhere else.
This isn't like scalpers buying up items, creating artificial scarcity and driving up prices for profit. This is just plain old capitalism.
Presumably the price also included shipping and handling fees, since you bought it online. So in the end the seller probably made just a couple of quid, he deserves to get paid for what he does no?
What I do to get back at them is to take all our decent donation stuff to local thrift stores and all the bulky crap that's barely hanging together goes to Goodwill for them to dispose of.
It is tacky to leave the sticker on there with the lower price, but you are the one who paid 12£. How does it matter what they paid? If they search for books to resell at a profit, that's time spent, risk taken, and money earned.
It always sucks to know you paid more than the seller did - but that just means Oxfam undervalued the book.
Having worked in one, charity shops tend to have a habit of either really undervaluing or overvaluing their donated goods - cause the people who actually set the prices mostly just guess based on looks and nothing more. Only if an item looks expensive will they do any research, and even then never really enough.
Granted, it's not perfect, but I would assume since they have one it's a publicly traded commodity (that is someone maintains a DB and sells it to such organizations).
Ok, don't buy it online then go get it from the thrift store yourself. Oh that takes valuable time and effort? Guess that's why it was marked up, peoples' time is worth money.
My case rests, the seller of the book provided you a valuable service then by making a product available to you that you otherwise wouldn't be able to get, and you're mad that they made a little money for their time?
So you're annoyed that someone (who took the time to go to a charity shop, list the book online, and ship it to you) charged you the RRP for the book, that you didn't have to buy from them?
I hope you have the same kind of energy for when mega-corporations charge anything from tens to thousands of pounds for products that often cost single pounds or even pennies to manufacture (due to underpaying for labour and materials that were in turn manufactured by underpaid labour as well), and the snowballing impact they have on the rest of the economy (by pricing out smaller companies, monopolising industries, avoiding tax, and so on).
The person you bought this from likely works for themsleves, trolling charity shops all day for bargains, and almost certainly pays tax on their income. I'm as anti-capitalist as they get, but even I can't take issue with this. If they had charged you more than the RRP, sure, that'd pushing it, but if you didn't want to pay full price, you should have spent your own time looking for the bargain. ¯\(ツ)/¯
Rofl. Imagine being mildly infuriated that someone marked up a bargain bin purchase by $10 to cover their time and effort to make it available to you to buy from the comfort of your home.
Why don't you spend your own day rummaging through thrift stores for it next time?
We shit on 'upselling' all the time. If you cleaned those pages, pressed them back and touched up the spine of the book, sure. But I'd be annoyed too if there was a 500% markup on a resale of used material
I see 10 pounds for the time and effort to shop around for bargains, then storing your haul, list the items online, and the cost of the other dozens of books that never sell, and then time and effort to package and ship, and whatever customer service along the way.
listen, you paid what you thought it was worth to you
that's how retail works
they buy product, then sell them at a markup
you buy products from them only if you think it's worth the price they're asking
you get the product, they get the money
I don't think about the price, It's about reselling something you got at a charity.
Plenty of stores sell cheap, used stuff that everyone can fit in their budgets. More and more of these resellers are picking the stores clean, leaving a lot less available for those who "need" it.
It could have been £300 and you will still complain and be the sucker for paying for that. Is the seller obligated to ship to you at a price of £2?
You could probably shop around a bunch of Oxfams to (maybe) get the book you wanted for cheap. Or you could also find discounted books at the Oxfam and list them for just £1 or 2 above the sticker price. Is that worth your time?
Like I get being upset at institutional practices like soft drinks costing companies a handful of pence per item when they charge £2.50 (or £4.50 at the cinema), and being stingy on the refills. Books on the other hand are a luxury item that (other than the textbook racket by publishers) you can go without.