BookMooch Reviews 19

Bookmooch is a great site. I've given away 200 books and received 150 so far. If you're a community minded reader, it works fine. Now for the bad part. 1. Sending books in the US is cheap through media mail. Internationally not so. This means I don't send internationally, and I understand when people in other countries don't want to send to me. 2. The really bad thing is that it's kinda bleeding to death. For stupid reasons Amazon does not allow BM to search for ISBNs, so adding books or searching for them has become hard. There are still people active, but it's probably at an end. The founder basically seems to have left -- his blog has not been updated in years.

My experience with BookMooch exposed a platform where the stated rules are not the ones actually enforced.

I used the system as presented. When requests were accepted but never fulfilled, or ignored for months by users who were visibly active at the same time, I used the complaint function. Rather than addressing their behaviour, I was labelled a bad actor, accused of targeting users, and told that complaints had been discussed privately outside the visible system.

I was then instructed to cancel my own unfulfilled requests, which counts against the requester, rather than requiring the other user to acknowledge or decline. I was told those users were acting in good faith despite prolonged non-response, and that I was the problem.

At the same time, all outstanding requests were marked as fulfilled and accepted, by some other actor, possibly the moderator or administrator, despite nothing being received. Attempts to follow up were dismissed as whining, and I was advised to close my account.

I was also told I should have learned the site’s informal social rules instead of relying on the posted rules and complaint process. This makes the platform fundamentally misleading: the written system is not the one being enforced.

A trust-based exchange cannot function when:

active users ignore requests without consequence
reporting issues leads to blame
disputes are closed administratively rather than resolved

I would strongly caution anyone against using this service if they expect fairness, transparency, or even basic accountability.

I've been a member of Bookmooch for several years and the few negative experiences I've had all came from a few careless (not malicious) members, not the site - some will not keep their lists updated, showing a book available when it's not. Currently, I have sent more books than I've received, but everything seems to work exactly as it's supposed to. No one has sent me a beat-up or stained book. Of course, newer books are easier to mooch, but you can leave requests on your wish list for years if necessary, and it you're in a hurry for something, there's always Amazon (though I bristle at the idea of making Jeff Bezos any richer)! I recommend Bookmooch. The more people who use it, the more inventory there will be for everyone, so pass the word heavily! For those who complain about Bookmooch, it's a FREE trading platform - FREE! How much are YOU doing for thousands of people for FREE? Yeah, that's what I thought, so shut your piehole!

I have had a very negative experience with bookmooch. I had an account for about a week. I had mailed out 7 or so books and recieved some books. I come back and find my inventory of 50 something books gone (this was directly after I told a couple people through their site that I was planning on leaving and trying to use up my points). They said that they needed to verify my email account. Shouldnt they have done that before letting me use the site they emailed me a bunch and nothing ever went back they email you when someone approved a bookmooch and so on, this put my account with a negative balance since you get points for adding books. It took me a long time to enter all those books. They have a slim selection of newer books. A lot of members are inactive so you find a book and think that you want it and the person is inactive so you cant get the book or the person is in a different country and doesn't mail overseas.. I would highly recommend staying away from bookmooch. It's not worth the little bit you will save from buying used from amazon.

Book mooch is great if you aren't working, and have bunches of time to check the site every day. If you have a job and don't check the site every evening, you are out of luck on most books posted. They don't give you more than a day to grab a book. Anymore than that and the book is posted to the next person and you're out of luck. I have missed most of the books posted to me since my school year started this year. Consequently, I have something like 10 points to redeem, with little chance of doing that until May. I have removed my remaining books from the site because I felt I was "giving away" my books and not getting much in return.