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[Shyshdy]

Well, this just aarived in my office email:I've taken out my name and personal info and such, but everything else is just as it came:

Dear **************,

The following order has been cancelled because the item is unavailable. There are many possibilities as to why the bookseller marked the book(s) unavailable:

- It may have been previously sold and not yet removed from our database.
- The book was sold to a walk-in customer in the bookseller's store
- There may have been a previous hold on the book
- The book was misplaced but the bookseller did not realize it was missing until they tried to locate it

Sales Order No.: 51419710

Bookseller: Phoenix Rising Rare & Used Books
Author: Carroll, Lewis
Title: Alice in Wonderland
Bookseller Book No.: 005658
Price: US$ 3.89

*** Your special instructions to the bookseller:
if no one home, please leave with the front office.

This order has NOT been shipped and you have not been charged for this portion of the order.

This cancellation refers only to the book(s) referenced above. If there are other books on your order, they will be confirmed separately.

We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have questions regarding this cancellation, please reply to this e-mail to send a message directly to the bookseller or use the contact information below:

Bookseller: Phoenix Rising Rare & Used Books
E-mail: onthetrailSPLATcenturytel.net
Phone: 541-573-2225
Address: P.O. Box 581, onthetrailSPLATcenturytel.net, Hines, OR, U.S.A., 97738

Abebooks Customer Support
www.abebooks.com

The world's largest online marketplace for books.

Abebooks (tm). Because you read.

NEW Books at Abebooks
Abebooks is your one-stop book shop. You'll find NEW books at great prices while continuing to support independent booksellers.
Visit our New Book Room: http://www.abebooks.com/docs/NewBooks/

This mail was created 16/Oct/05 14:48 and postmarked 16/Oct/05 15:01

I tried to call them to find out who bought the book, considering I bough it within like 10 minutes of posting, and what do you know, the number is disconnected. I thought I read through tis email, but if I left personal info in here and didn't catch it, someone pm me, lol. That's lame, I was really excited

[Shyshdy]

I emailed the book store, hopefully someone can tell me SOMETHING, here's what I sent:

Hi, I recently (last week) oredered a copy of alice in wonderland by lewis carroll from your store, from the abebooks.com website. I received a notification today that it was not available and my order was cancelled. It states a few reasons, and I would like very much to inquire about them, but when I call your phone number, it is disconnected. My questions are as follows:

1.) is there a hold on it? if so, are they under one of the following names: Triscal Islington(may be spelt differently), Orkid alice(last name may differ), or toby godden? I know all of these people, the three of us are trying to get a hold of this book, and one of them may have placed a hold on it.

2.) it also says someone may have walked in and bought it, it could also be one of these three people. Are you able to tell who may have bought this book? This particula copy is of importance to me. Also, this next line is going to make absolutely no sense, but if it does, I need your help:

I seek the 13 books, I seek triscal Islington.

Thanks for ur time, have a great day.







I know, Iknow, I'm a dork, but I wear it with great pride

[draghkar]

darn..

thats not right.. not right at all. must be more to it than we think off..

wonder who got it though...

all in all its wicked...

awell maybe it surfaces again some day...

D.

[Shyshdy]

And I just got this too:


The original message was received at Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:28:00 -0400 (EDT)
from ********* [*****]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<onthetrail@centurytel.net>
(reason: 550 5.1.1 <onthetrail@centurytel.net>... User unknown)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx2.centurytel.net.:
>>> RCPT To:<onthetrail@centurytel.net>
<<< 550 5.1.1 <onthetrail@centurytel.net>... User unknown
550 5.1.1 <onthetrail@centurytel.net>... User unknown


on the trail @ centurytel.net............

did we miss something important here?

[Law of Five]

abebooks is a real company, right, not an IG construct? I imagine that when they get your email you'll be Freaking the Mundanes, but good luck!

Oh, and re: CenturyTel:

CenturyTel provides reliable Internet access and Web hosting to communities across the country. CenturyTel is mainly a rural telecommunications company serving customers in 22 states. Dial-up Internet service is available in 17 states throughout the Midwest, Great Lakes, Pacific Northwest, and Southern United States.

from: http://community.centurytel.net/service/

Did you send something to one of their users called onthetrail?

Law of Five

[Shyshdy]

yep. it was the opnly email address I had for the book store. It bounced anyways.

[Law of Five]

Just doing some detective work:

Your bookseller on Abe.com was:

Email onthetrailSPLATcenturytel.net

Address P.O. Box 581
onthetrailSPLATcenturytel.net
Hines OR
U.S.A. 97738

Phone 541-573-2225

It's a bit worrying if their email addy is defunct - maybe try the phone number?

Just on a hunch, I looked up booksellers listed on Abe.com located in Pembrokshire in South Wales (which is where Swansea is located, at the foot of the Gower peninsula http://www.owain-glyndwr-soc.org.uk/mapofwales.htm), but there are only 2 listed and none seem to fit the bill.

Always digging

Law of Five

[Mountain Girl]

The phone number is a fake, and I called information. There is no Phoenix Rising rare and Used books in Hines, Oregon.

[Law of Five]

So it seems at least likely that Phoenix Rising rare and Used books was an IG construct set up purely to show off the Alice book and that it's vanished as quickly as it was set up. Which is why there is no book on it's way to you, shyshy... I hope I get my Practical Time Travel from Alibris.com...

Law of Five

[Mountain Girl]

I'm not sure. If you "search bookstores" at abebooks and search phoenix rising rare & used books you can see a catalog of their books, yet all of the info on their phone number and address is bogus.

[Shyshdy]

If its IG, I will be thoroughly pissed at the amount of personal information I had to give to get the book. Bank info, real name and address, if it's IG, that's REALLY not ok with me. I'm gonna pretend the site itself is not IG, as to keep me from freaking out now.

[Incog Neato]

I am pretty sure that this is all nothing.

Abebooks is 100% legit. I have ordered from them MANY times.

The Phoenix bookstore may have been their original 'live' store before internet book sales took off.

Usually the reason a book order is cancelled by them is because someone beat you to 'the click'.

They sell on pretty much every online book sales place I know of....and they list the same books at all the sites they sell on. So, someone at Amazon.com might have bought the book before you....and Half.com had just not removed it from their inventory yet. Or something like that.

Long story short....methinks this is an inadevertantly created 'red herrring'.

Carry on....

(oh yeah, as far as 'who'bought the book.....Alice in Wonderland was popular LONG before Triskabiblios hit the scene. I bet, globally, there are hundreds(if not thousands) of copies sold daily.)

[moongazer]

So why would the reply address on their email be :- "RCPT To:<onthetrail@centurytel.net>"

"On the Trail" seems fishy - unless this is really their email address?

But of course, it isn't, as it bounced anyway. So surely it must be a set-up; otherwise a genuine "out of stock" notification would have a valid email addy.

[Incog Neato]

I'm telling ya.....whatever the reason....I would be shocked if it had anything to do with anything.

Think of it this way....how many places can one purchase a copy of Alice? Thousands.

And, beyond that....I again say that Abebooks is legit beyond the pale. I am 110% sure that the company is on the up and up. I have purchase literally dozens of books from them over the past 3-4 years. I have also had a couple cancelled transactions due to the scenario I laid out above(no, I did not keep them, so I do not know what the email was).

As far as the email addy....who knows. But, I mark it up to coincidence if anything. Again, hundreds of copies are sold each day....the liklihood of a Triskaphyte being the one to buy any specific copy is all but nil(unless directed to a particular store/particular clerk with a 'password' or something).

Really though....I believe that following up on this is chasing the wrong rabbit down the wrong hole.

Just sayin....

Edit: Ahhhhh....I think my dense-self has finally caught on. You WERE directed to a particular seller. Right? You were the one that purchased the book that Shy's scribe page linked to? If yes, my bad.....I am sure you can see why I was doubting the importance of the above info.

[Law of Five]

Upon further inquiry, I think that Incog is probably right, based simply on Occam's razor.

From Wikipedia.org:

In its simplest form, Occam's Razor states that one should make no more assumptions than needed. Put into everyday language, it says: Given two equally predictive theories, choose the simpler.

It's incontestable that abebooks.com is a real company in the real world. They coordinate smaller booksellers worldwide to match up books to be sold with people who want to buy them. Not all of their sellers may be reputable, but they have to go through quite a process to be accepted: http://www.abebooks.com/docs/Sell/stepByStep.shtml (useful if you're thinking of selling some books, but I digress).

so...

Theory 1.
Phoenix Rising rare and Used books is a made-up IG construct (IG=in-game for the noobs). Toby set it up so that he could have his own page to display the Alice book. When it had served its purpose, he toasted it and there never was a book to be sold. Shyshdy gave his personal info to Toby for nothing. Boooo... (this is bad) To cover his tracks in his nefarious scheme, he also listed 100s of other books under the same company (there are 28 books listed under Computers alone for this company today and that's one of over 40 categories). He also gave all of his info including a US credit card to set up the account with Abebooks.

Theory 2.
Phoenix Rising rare and Used books is a real company and nothing to do with 13books. They sold the Alice book to someone else and Shyshdy didn't get a copy because sh*t happens. They have also moved since they set up and have failed to update their company info/phone/email or else they are a slightly shady concern and didn't provide kosher info in the first place. They chose 'onthetrail' for an email address because the owner's wife loves cowboy movies (especially the John Wayne ones) but since the divorce they have let it lapse.

You be the judge...

Law of Five