Last week I knew that I would be going to the Chapters bookstore. Prior to my visit I went online to Chapters.ca and found the books that I wanted. Agile Web Development with Rails & Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook. The Ruby on Rails book was supposed to be around $50 and was 33% off so was on sale for $32.79. Dan Cederholm’s web standards book was also listed at 33% off and was supposed to be $26.46. I was very happy and was planning on buying these two books on my trip. All day at work I was excited to get these books and get my dip my feet into some Ruby on Rails programming and also read up on web standards.
I went to the store and after 10 minutes of searching around the computer section I finally found the two books that I was looking for. I just assumed that the books were 33% off. You would think that the online store has the same deals as the actual stores. I took the two books up to the computer only to find that they were full price. I thought that maybe the sale ended the night before. I called over a manger and found out the Chapters.ca is separate from the in store, thus the prices are different. The retail store also does not match the prices of the online store. The manager told me that the online store is in direct competition with Amazon, that’s why the prices are different. That makes sense but you would think that the retail store could match the price if somebody tells them to. Most stores match the price of competitors and Chapters won’t even match the price of their own store!
When I finally got home I went to Chapters.ca and saw that the books were the same old sale price with the 33% off. I went to Amazon and found out that they were actually cheaper. Instead of taking 33% off, they took 34% off. Talk about competition. I sent my order only to find out that I would receive my books in MID SEPTEMBER! I quickly canceled that order and went to Chapters.ca (unfortunately). I ordered the books and they were said to arrive in 3 - 10 days. That was Thursday night at 11PM. The next day I opened my shipment tracker and they were shipped and at the Vancouver packing facility and scheduled to arrive on Tuesday (yesterday). I just checked the tracker and the books are only 40 minutes away from my house. My guess is that they will arrive tomorrow afternoon. Look forward to Ruby on Rails and web standards posts to come.
Tags: chapters, books, Cederholm, dan, css, rubyonrails, ror, ruby