When I do a search, a store that I know has my book doesn't show up in your comparisons.

When you perform a price comparison on AllBookstores.com, our robot goes out to each of our many stores, and checks their prices in real time. There are many factors that can cause a store to be excluded from a comparison, and they are:

• The stores web site is down.

• The stores web site is under a heavy load, and not responding to our robot in the time allowed.

• Network congestion on the Internet.

Most of these issues are only temporary, and are resolved automatically when the above problems are resolved.

One of your merchant coupons is not valid.

Our merchant coupon offers are provided to us not only by the merchants themselves, but also by you, our users. Sometimes these coupons do not have expiration dates, and the only way we know that they've expired is if you tell us. Please email us if you've found an offer that has expired or just doesn't work.

When I visit a merchants store, there is no security lock in my browser when I'm supposed to be on a secure page?

For ease of navigation, and to facilitate the merchants coupons feature of our site, we frame all of our merchants stores.

The bottom frame of the page is secure when making credit card transactions at any of our merchant stores, even though a browser security lock is not shown.

All of our merchants use the highest encryption methods to ensure secure transactions, but due to browser constraints when using frames, the security lock is not visible.

To confirm security when on a supposed secure page, just right click with your mouse somewhere on the "secure page", and if you're using Internet Explorer, choose properties, and on the window that appears, on the Address line, you should see the address starts with https instead of http. The added "s" lets you know its secure.

If you're a Netscape user, right click, and choose View Frame Info. The resulting page will be framed, and the lower frame will have the security details. Under "Location" you should see the "https" in the url, as well as additional security details at the bottom of that page.