The Book Den

The Book Den looks charming but the delight ends there. I left a several hundred year old book there with an agreement by the salesman that within about a week he would research the book's value and get back to me. He also said he'd find out generally what the book was about as it's written in Latin.

After a couple weeks without hearing from him I returned to the book store by cab. His excuse for not getting back to me was that he was having trouble with the Internet connection so he couldn't do the book research. Again he promised to get it done in the next week or so. Several more weeks of not hearing from him followed. Returning again I got a similar excuse, but he assured me he'd get to it in the next few days.

After several more weeks of complete silence I again returned and left a note asking for him to call me and diplomatically expressing my concern. With no call coming, a week later I sent him an e-mail inquiring about my book. He did not respond to that either so a week later I took another cab to the Book Den.

Up until that point I'd been very laid back and diplomatically pleasant. On my next visit a week later I insisted on getting a written consignment sale contract which I got. The salesman said he would in the next one or two days e-mail me the wording of how he was going to list the book on-line and that within two days arrange to deliver the book back to me for safe keeping until he found a buyer. More than a week passed with no word from him.

Based on his repeatedly breaking his word to me, I had by then completely lost faith that he was even telling me the truth about the book's value so I again took a cab to the Book Den to get my book. When I asked him why he had not gotten back to me and returned my book as agreed upon he just looked at me strangely -- no excuse came. When I asked him why he had not kept his word any of the times he had not excuse. He gave me the book back and asked me to leave the store.

Having made 5 trips across town to the Book Den over the several months, at about $45 per trip, I'd not only not gotten the book sold but was out a lot of money.

In my opinion the Book Den can be trusted about as much as a Manhattan street card shark.