Personal shopper vs Resellers

I have to admit I love shopping.. and it doesn't help that many people are providing "Personal shopper" services with extra surcharge of 10% or more (depending on items, personal shopper's preference and term & conditions imposed). Best still, is get a group of common interest friends and help each other buy. Good thing, is your don't need to be there when you shop. Bad thing, is your wallet gets thinner.

Books Personal Shopper

I met a bunch of friends of same kindred spirit. Book lovers. We would "help" other mummies to buy books whenever we were at a book sales namely Big Bad Wolf, MPH Warehouse Sales or even Popular RM5 Fest.

Friends we have become and we do not charge each other.
Close friends, I would say "I give you RM100 budget - please pick some books for me which you would pick for your child". Imagine when we meet up, all we do is exchange bags of books, toys, clothing, you name it!

Otherwise, acquaintances tend to charge 10% based on their toll, petrol, effort, time to queue, etc.
I met a few of these acquaintances who would snap shot the books they see into Facebook or Whataps so we could order what we wanted.

Downside, we get so excited we blindly buy the books because of a familiar famous author, attractive cover, attractive prices, or plain "kiasu-ness" because other people wanted that particular book too.
 
I have other "friends" who recommend books and will charge a surcharge to for their trouble. They would however recommend books and not blindly ask/tempt you to buy. These "friends" taste have to be similar to yours to make it work.

Unfortunately, where there is great bargains, there are opportunists.

My friends and I have ranted about resellers who goes to warehouse sales buying stacks of a particular book and depriving the rest of getting the book. The books organiser do not stop this because it helps sales.

But we know the true reality, whereby these reseller will sell these books at a higher price to other willing buyers who cannot make it, don't have the time, or just not aware these books were a fraction of the selling price shown.

However, there is this phrase:
Willing buyer, willing seller...

Anyhow, let's wait for the next warehouse book sales to think about this again.