I try to stay within "ships and sold from Amazon" category. It's more expensive, but it's worth for me. If that's not available, I use "ships from Amazon by the

I try to stay within "ships and sold from Amazon" category. It's more expensive, but it's worth for me. If that's not available, I use "ships from Amazon by the original manufacturer" only. I did not encountered much problems that way. Certainly not with books. The Amazon Marketplace itself is dicey. It feels like you taking a serious gamble. Once I ordered a $100+ textbook from the 3rd party and received a cheap international edition from India instead. On return, the seller asked to ship it back to India for $60 - $80 cost to me. I called Amazon and they just refunded the whole purchase and dealt with the seller themselves. So, in the end, it was still Ok. But I really do watch that I buy only things that, at least, ship from Amazon itself.