4 ms·

To be honest, Borders was like a library with built in coffee shop in the UK. People just went in there, checked out the book and bought it on amazon whilst sit

• ja27 13y ago
  Borders (in the US) used to send out coupons for 30-40% off a single item. That usually put their price very close to Amazon's, assuming Borders had the book you were looking for.
• xyzzy123 13y ago
  I used to be an avid Borders customer; I could physically go to the store and check out their computer section and through serendipity I would find things I liked and buy them. They were enormously overpriced, like most computing related books outside the U.S. ($100 NZD +), but I would wear that because I liked the experience. This was in about 2003. By 2008, the section which held the long tail I liked had shrunk to maybe 2 shelves. They no longer kept the kinds of books I liked in inventory, just "Photoshop for dummies" or perhaps the odd "Learning Python". At the point where everything I might want had to be ordered in and would take longer to arrive than from Amazon, I stopped bothering to go :/
  • ChuckMcM 13y ago
    This was my experience as well. When I first discovered borders they were very well run. They had a lot of interesting books and a very energetic staff. Then they sort of lost their way and suddenly they didn't have any books I wanted and the staff was replaced by people who always seemed to have "just started." I stopped going. That said, every time I go to Portland I spend a couple of hours and at least a couple hundred dollars in Powell's books.
• cafard 13y ago
  The ones I saw, mostly in and around Washington, DC, usually seemed to be doing a good business.