Yesterday, when I got home from having lots of hair cut off, there were several parcels waiting at the front door. There was my Interweave Knits and Interweave Crochet magazines I ordered from The Wool Shack. (I’ve been through quite an ordeal trying to get a copy of IK winter.)

There was also part of an order from Booktopia. You may remember me blogging about finding a fab book of knitting stitches at an op shop. I was so impressed that I decided to buy more books in the same vein from this publisher. The book from the op shop is called “The Harmony Guide to Knitting Stitches”. I ordered a book called “450 Knitting Stitches, Vol. 2” along with two other volumes containing more knitting stitches, and one of crochet stitches.

This is a pic of the two covers:

This is a pic of the inside of both books:

They are EXACTLY the same inside. Well, except for the font, and the font is not what knitters buy knitting stitch books for, is it?

Not only do they have different covers and different titles, but they have different ISBNs. How the heck is a customer supposed to know one book is a reprint of the other?

(The wierd thing is, the book was listed as being Vol 1 on the Booktopia page and on my order, but it turns out to be Vol 2. You can’t see the ‘2’ on the image as it is too small. You’d think if the book was a reprint of the original, which isn’t a Vol anything, then the new one would be a Vol 1, not 2.)

I’ve emailed Booktopia about this and asked if I can get a refund or exchange. Haven’t heard back yet. I feel sorry for them, since this is the publisher’s fault, not theirs. But on the other hand, I started using Booktopia because I was not happy with Amazon’s handing (or non-handling) of problems, so I’ll be interested to see if Booktopia’s service is any better. It’s not until something goes wrong that you learn whether a shop is worth buying from.