I can’t believe no one else is trumpeting the wonders of half.com here on Mouthshut, since half.com is an awesome site!

Half.com is a site that allows sellers and buyers to find each other, and purchase items at a good price. Most of the times are used, but occasionally there will be a seller who is selling new things. As a general rule, expect to find used things here. Think of half.com as the ’’no bid’’ equivalent of Ebay. In fact, half.com is now owned by Ebay, so it shouldn’t be too hard to compare them.

Half.com is best known for having tons or books, movies, and music CDs available, though they’ve recently added other items like computers and electronic equipment. I have no experience with that particular department, so I’ll focus on the ’’media’’ section.

If you’re looking for a particular book, movie or CD, simply go to half.com’s main page and enter the title in the search box, and tell it to search in the correct section. It will return a list of all items that are remotely close to that title, with exact matches listed first, along with the lowest price. Clicking on the title will take you to a page that lists all available copies of that item, along with the price each seller is asking, the seller’s name, and ranking. It’s up to you to decide who to buy from. You may decide it’s worth an extra dollar or two to buy from the seller with a better rating.

Half.com is easy to navigate, and the pages load fairly quickly even on a dial up connection. For the last year, I have purchased all of my CDs, books, VHS tapes, and DVDs from either half.com or through ebay, and never had a bad transaction. Half.com is a little more secure than Ebay, in that you do actually go through half.com, instead of dealing directly with the seller. It works like this...

Browse or search and find the item you want. Add it to your shopping cart, and keep looking for more goodies or go directly to the checkout. If you haven’t already signed up for half.com, you’ll do it the first time you check out. You enter your shipping address and you credit card info. I think that you can also pay by check or money order, but I’ve never used that option, so I’m not sure.

Half.com then notifies the seller(s) that you wish to purchase their item. The seller has 3 business days to acknowlege this, and they have 24 hours to ship the item after confirming the sale. So no more than four days will pass between the time you place your order and the item is shipped. Half.com holds the money and pays the seller once a month for all completed sales. This gives the buyer plenty of time to actually receive the item and notify half.com of any problems. All sellers offer media mail shipping, with a flat rate of $2.25 US for the first item purchased from the same seller, with discounts for purchases made from the SAME seller. Some sellers offer priority mail rates, which are around $4.00. The only real difference is the speed of delivery from the post office, and media mail is cheaper.

I bought a Stephen King hardback book on half.com three weeks after it’s release. I paid $12.00 for it, about half of the retail price. I’ve also stumbled across a LOT of books (paper and hard back) for less than a dollar! Even after adding shipping, that is still a great price for a hardback book!

The only gripe I have with half.com is the oddness of the search results. Most of the time, it will give you a list of what is apparently the exact same title, but different ’’lowest prices’’. For example, a search for Silence of the Lambs in ’’movies’’ will produce at least five links to ’’Silence of the Lambs-VHS’’ with a different lowest price next to each link. Remember, each link isn’t to ONE product, it’s to every product with that title. So the first link will take you to a page that lists 50 people selling Silence of the Lambs, with $3.99 being the lowest price. The second link takes you to a different set of people selling the same movie, with the lowest price being $5.99. I’ve never figured out why all the results for one title aren’t under one link, and it’s a pain having to click on multiple title links to browse though and pick the best copy to buy.

Sellers are also required to list the condition of their item, from ’’excellent’’ to ’’fair’’. The standards for each category are pretty stringent, and misrepresenting an item as ’’excellent’’ is grounds for getting your selling account cancelled. Oddly enough, condition seems to play little part in the best price. Most of the time I’ll end up buying an ’’excellent’’ item for only a few cents more (and sometimes less!!) than one in ’’fair’’ condition.

If you’re looking for a place to get books, music, and movies for a fraction of the retail cost, give Half.com a shot. It’s quick, easy, and you have some protection as a buyer if something goes wrong. Half.com has a money back guarantee on items sold through them. Fortunately, I’ve never had to use it.