eBooks.com Reviews 359

TrustScore 4.5 out of 5

4.5

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Review summary

Created with AI, based on recent reviews

Considering 67 reviews, reviewers overwhelmingly had a great experience with this company. Customers frequently praise the product selection, highlighting the ease of finding and accessing books. Many appreciate the straightforward and user-friendly website, making the purchasing and downloading process simple and efficient. People also value the flexibility in reading options, including the ability to use various e-readers and avoid being tied to a single ecosystem. However, some people were dissatisfied with the company's app, noting issues with its functionality and user experience. Specifically, some reviewers mentioned difficulties with transferring books between devices, the need for external software like Adobe Digital Editions, and problems with adjusting font sizes within the app. There were also comments about the lack of clarity regarding file formats and the inability to use certain e-readers like Kindle for some purchases.

What people talk about most

Product

Reviewers express satisfaction with the product selection and ease of use. Customers appreciate the vast... See more

User experience

Consumers find the user experience to be largely positive, praising the ease of purchasing and downloading... See more

Website

Customers had positive experiences with the website, finding it easy to navigate, browse, and purchase books.... See more

Application

Reviewers highlight negative aspects of the app, expressing dissatisfaction with its functionality. Many... See more

Reviews shaping this summary

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

My experience with EBOOKS has been very positive overall. The platform is easy to use, the selection of books is excellent, and it helped me find titles that match my interests in economics and public... See more

Company replied

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

The site is simple to use. Its so easy to locate a book or discover a new one. Delivery is instant after payment which is efficient , safe and straight forward. Your book is loaded to your ebook reade... See more

Company replied

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

After sales service is great. Friendly, proficient staff are terrific. The revised purchasing process is much better. We never buy from other sites...no need when the one that you're using is so g... See more

Company replied

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

I’ve had a very negative experience with obtaining digitized books on the google play platform. I had not come across ebooks.com so I checked into it before making a purchase. Alex at ebooks.com resea... See more

Company replied


Company details

  1. Book Store

About eBooks.com

Written by the company

Launched in 2000, eBooks.com is a popular ebook retailer with a reputation for innovation, integrity and independence. We sell ebooks direct to millions of consumers around the world, with five local sales portals in the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Australia.

You can read our ebooks online, or download them to a vast array of devices, using our Ebook Reader apps. As well as being dubbed "The most ethical e-bookseller" by ethicalconsumer.com, eBooks.com is trusted by over 4,000 global publishers. We are also the supplier of choice for thousands of educational institutions around the world.

Are you actually reviewing the right company?

Is it possible that the order was placed with another company, not eBooks.com? There are a lot of companies with the word "ebook" in their names. Before leaving us a damning complaint, check your credit card account (or PayPal if you paid that way) for the name of the merchant. If the name isn't exactly, and only, "EBOOKS.COM", then you'll need to contact the company that billed you -- not eBooks.com.

Are you having technical problems?

Contact our highly trained support team and they'll get things moving for you:
https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new


Contact info

4.5

Excellent

TrustScore 4.5 out of 5

359 reviews

5-star
4-star
3-star
2-star
1-star

Replied to 100% of negative reviews

Typically replies within 24 hours

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Rated 4 out of 5 stars

Fast and easy.Boring review process.

Purchasing the ebooks was fast and easy. Writing the review took considerably longer time ( reading the mail , repeared logging into email account by received verification code and so on...) than shoppong itself.

18 July 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hello and thank you for your review. And thank you for your comments about logging into our review system. I have asked our technical team to look into this to see what we can do to make it simpler.

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Another easy purchase

Able to review the content before buying. Buying process is great. The delivery of the book is immediate

6 July 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hello George,

Thank you very much for your kind review, and the 5 stars!

Best wishes,

Anna
www.ebooks.com

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

I tried to buy a book, but was faced with social engineering. Time waster!

I tried to buy a book, but it claimed that I was using a disposable email address, but still gave me the option to create an account. I then attempted to purchase the book, but it then claimed it could not contact my bank. When I went to try a different credit card, it would no longer let me enter credit card details.

Sounds like social engineering. They have got fixated on my email address. It looks like they want to collect as much personal information about me as possible. All for US$10 book?

After this experience, I would not install any software from this company on my laptop or mobile device.

ebook.com also wanted to charge me EU Value Added Tax (VAT), but the website does not provide an EU VAT ID. Can you please provide your EU VAT ID to prove that the collected VAT is in fact forwarded to the relevant EU country?

25 June 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com


Follow-up July 7th 2024

This is just an update on your TrustPilot review of eBooks.com to let you know that we have implemented your suggestion: We're now displaying our tax registration number on the checkout page - ahead of purchase.

Thank you for your feedback.

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

========================

Hi and thank you for your message via TrustPilot.

I'm sorry it took a while to respond to your message; I was waiting on feedback from the tech team.

The reason we nudge customers to use a non-burner email address is that it often ends in grief when the customer has lost the use of the temporary email address and they have trouble logging back in to their eBooks.com account. As you saw, it's not a hard requirement.

I'm not sure what happened when our system said it was unable to contact your bank. That's not something I've seen before. And, similarly, there's nothing in our setup that would deliberately prevent you from submitting fresh card details. Quite the contrary.

We have examined the log files for the 24 hours prior to your report and were unable to find an explanation. So all I can do at this point is sincerely apologise for the disappointing experience you had today.

Our tech team has put an alert in place and will examine all failed card transactions over the coming days to see if they can spot what happened there.

Regarding VAT, we are required to add applicable tax to transactions, depending on what country you're in. The tax amount varies from one state to another (and in a growing number of cases the rate is zero, which is comforting).

Thank you for your suggestion regarding VAT number. I have added that to our development plan and soon we will display our VAT number on the payment page prior to payment. It is currently displayed on the receipt page (after payment) which doesn't help to give reassurance ahead of purchase!

UK VAT Registration number - 993297365
EU VAT Identification Number - EU372016121

Again, I'm sorry we disappointed you and we'll try to do better.

Best wishes,

Anna
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Reliable

Quick, reliable and easy going. Keep it up.

22 May 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi Philip,

Thanks very much for taking the time to give us a 5-star review. We'll do our best to keep it up!

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Highly efficient

Highly efficient, Great selection of books, wonderful site!

21 May 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Thank you very much for this generous review - high praise!

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

Not an ePub open format

The presale webpages said this was an ePub format. This is not true. This is an Adobe format. I tried reaching out thought the support page on three separate occasions only to have the form fail to send. Please refund my account. -Thank you!

14 May 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi Mark,

I'm so sorry you had this trouble.

I think I just found your account on our system and it looks like we processed a full refund already today.

Can you please write to ebooks@ebooks.com to advise me of the name and email address registered to your eBooks.com account - just to be sure that we've actually processed your refund.

Regarding us not replying to your query, I'll investigate and see what happened there. We aim to have all new support tickets cleared within 5 hours.

Finally, about EPUB vs Adobe. We do try to make it clear on our product pages that most of our books are secured with DRM (digital rights management) encryption, and that you'll need to install a special reader app in order to read most of our ebooks. This is true of all online retailers who sell ebooks from the major trade publishers - it's a security requirement that the publishers insist on.

I'll ask our design team to see if they can come up with wording that makes this clearer.

Considering your disappointing experience, thank you for giving us 2 stars instead of one!

Best wishes,

Anna
www.ebooks.com

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

Got the purchase done ok

Got the purchase done ok, with a bit of fiddling. Not certain if I needed to "download" or just "read online".
Don't really need to retain a book after reading it. She advice would be good

11 April 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi Robert,

Thank you for your review, and for your suggestion.

I'll ask the team to add a simple explainer as to why a customer might choose to download a book, or simply read it online.

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

I bought two books from ebooks and one…

I bought two books from ebooks and one will not download. It took a while for the first one to download and I had to reinstall the reader

11 April 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi Kate,

I'm very sorry you had this trouble. I've asked our support team to reach out to you to get this resolved.

I tested the 2 ebooks you bought and there's definitely an issue with one of them.

If you'd like a refund for both books - or just the dodgy one - please let our helpdesk know and they will jump to it.

You'll find them at support@ebooks.com. In any event, you'll hear from them soon.

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

Ebook didn't work on Adobe editions

Had some issues with the pdf, was trying to read it on a larger screen, but was advised by helpful customer service to download epub, and to use an alternative to Adobe editions called bluereader. Was frustrated with the file not working initially, but ebooks were very responsive with helping me.

7 April 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

(Updated Tuesday)

Hey, thank you for the upgrade Chris!

Kind regards,

Anna
www.ebooks.com


(Original reply)

Hello Chris,

I'm sorry you experienced this trouble with Adobe's Digital Editions software. I have asked our support team to contact you directly to see if they can get things working for you.

Failing that (or if you've already had enough!) they will be glad to process a full refund.

Best wishes,

Anna
www.ebooks.com

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

support does not respond

Used ebooks a few times without issue but some time ago ago I purchased an ebook that wouldn't download, with a message that the ebook was corrupted and to contact support. I've contacted them in different ways several times asking for access to a usable file or a refund (pretty fair, right?) but they do not respond. Might move to Kindle.

28 March 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hello Jane,

Thank you for contacting us on TrustPilot about this issue. My colleague Sheila did reply to your message on Monday, as follows:

"You can certainly return this ebook. Would you like us to apply a credit to your eBooks.com account against future purchases? Or would you prefer us to process a full credit card refund? Just let us know which option you would prefer and we'll get onto it straight away."

Is it possible that her reply went into your spam folder? To avoid this in future, just add "support@ebooks.com" to your Gmail contacts; that will ensure that any future mail from our help desk will go straight to your inbox.

In any event, we have processed a full refund, per your request.

If you need any further help, don't hesitate to contact us at support@ebooks.com.

Best wishes,

Anna
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

1) Ease of purchase

1) Ease of purchase. 2) Ease of search. 3) DRM-free availability (with stamping) to ensure compatibility between different readers. 4) Recommendations are curated outside (-just enough) of "popular" books. 5) No excessive marketing/targeting.

26 March 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi JedR,

Thank you for taking the trouble to review eBooks.com. And it's heartening to see that some of those things we work so hard to get right in the background (UX, search, DRM-free, manual curation, calibrated marketing ...) are appreciated. I've passed your comments on to the team - some well-deserved recognition.

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

eBooks treats its customers fairly

I decided to use eBooks last year after a very bad experience with Amazon. Early on, I encountered some difficulties with getting gift certificates to work on their system. Some of that appears to be a glitch on their part, some of it on mine.
What matters is that, unlike other companies, eBooks was responsive to my quite strident complaints (including my original post on this platform) and worked with me to make it right.
There aren't many corporations, especially in the tech sector, that treat their customers fairly and are willing to take steps to promptly resolve their issues.
That matters a lot to me, and I unreservedly recommend eBooks to others.

23 March 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

FOLLOWUP MESSAGE FROM EBOOKS.COM

Hello Doug,

We were able to trace your account. Rest assured that you won't be out of pocket and we'll get this issue resolved.

I think the issue arose - precisely as you said - because at the point of purchase, instead of clicking "Do you have s gift certificate or coupon code", you clicked on "Process order". The system then just went ahead and billed your card.

I will ask our design team to find a way to make the option to use a gift certificate at checkout more obvious to users - to avoid this confusion in future.

I'll write to you directly (offline) to ask how you'd like to proceed in order to resolve this.

But I'll also look into the communication delays you experienced.

Best wishes,

Stephen Cole
Founder and CEO
www.wbooks.com


INITIAL RESPONSE:

Hello Doug,

I've had trouble locating you on our system. I couldn't find a customer with your name. I also searched our help-desk correspondence but can't find any emails from you.

Is it possible that the orders were placed with another company, not eBooks.com? There are a lot of companies with the word "ebook" in their names. Could you please ask your wife and sisters to check their credit card accounts (or PayPal if they paid that way) for the name of the merchant. If the name isn't exactly, and only, "EBOOKS.COM", then you'll need to contact the company that billed them -- not eBooks.com.

If in fact you did have such a bad experience with eBooks.com, then I sincerely apologise. You have every reason to be angry. Questions will be asked.

At the very least we need to process full refunds for your wife and sisters. This is fast and easy to do. To that end, can I prevail on you to contact me at this email address: ebooks(at)ebooks.com. The message will come straight to me and I'll get right on it.

In your message please include the 3 gift certificate codes. They will look something like this: b37panhojdpagc (14 random characters).

To avoid email back-and-forth, it would also help if you include the email addresses that your wife (and sisters) registered with us, and the invoice numbers, if possible. The invoice number is displayed in the receipt email they received. If this is too hard, the codes alone should be sufficient.

Again, if it was eBooks.com that treated you so badly, I'm very sorry. I'll make sure the refunds come through ASAP.

Best wishes,

Stephen Cole
Founder and CEO
www.wbooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Great Great

Great Great

16 March 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi Will,

Thank you very much for the thumbs-up!

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Excellent site

Excellent site, products and service. Keep going in that manner. Thank you.

14 March 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hello Ernesto,

Thank you very much for your 5-star rating. I'm so glad our service works well for you!

Best wishes,

Anna
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Easy to use

Easy to use, fast checkout and download.

5 March 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi Crystal,

Thank you very much for this 5-star review. I hope we continue to please!

Best wishes,

James
www.ebooks.com

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

Great experience

Many books to choose from, easy check-out & download. Overall great experience.

27 February 2024
Unprompted review
eBooks.com logo

Reply from eBooks.com

Hi Maria,

Thank you for taking the trouble to review eBooks.com, and for your kind thoughts. I'm glad you're pleased with eBooks.com!

Best wishes,

Anna
www.ebooks.com

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