yet another advertisement in which she blatantly lies about how long she's been using the product
Also given she's obviously comfortable going into bookstores, I really don't get why she's shopping online for the most part? It may be the easiest way to get some uni books depending on availability, but surely for reading for pleasure, it's much more environmentally friendly to buy stuff in person?
She shows herself in Waterstones as often as possible, acts like it's her home away from home and touches all the pretty books to spread her germs, but rarely seems to buy anything there. She's just angling for a Waterstones sponsorship.
But for all the talk (largely by herself) of being
such a bookworm and for how materialistic she is about everything else, she doesn't seem to buy a lot of books online or in person (makes sense, since she doesn't actually read them). It's why she struggled to fill the bookcase she didn't need and had to pad space with library books, borrowed books and stacks of stolen books from her parents.
Her sponsorship is definitely another sham. It's the same service she advertised for the uni house furniture video where she bought cheaply-made things at inflated cost and tried to spin it as a great deal for students. She hasn't used it since.
Decadence: A Literary Anthology, one of the first books shown - the best deal Ruby could find with this "service" is £20. It's £12.71 on Amazon, or around £9 used at Abebooks or on eBay.
I decided to replicate Ruby's entire Karma order to see how much money she actually saved shopping at Hive through Karma versus elsewhere.
Ruby's order came to £49.69 - with Karma's coupon discount magic, it conjured up a 5% discount for a total of £47.21.
That exact order on Amazon? £40.92. The only book that wasn't substantially cheaper was the hardcover Letters of Emily Dickinson, though there was a cheaper paperback option and I'm sure many other collected versions of Emily's letters to choose from that were much cheaper.
Want to buy them used? Entire order comes to £30.85 on Abebooks. Same order on eBay? £28.98.
A minute of searching will find substantially cheaper deals than cluttering your browser with dodgy add-ons that likely syphon your data. Small discounts off overpriced items isn't a deal. It's a waste of money. Ruby's just spouting misleading bullshit and outright lies for money, as usual.
Other takeaways:
Why is Ruby
still annotating Sketches by Boz? She's been supposedly reading and making notes on that for several weeks now. Surely the only benefit to starting the required reading in the summer is that you're not still screwing around with it all when uni starts.
Ruby claims to have no time to read for pleasure because she's too busy with required reading. I call bullshit. Ruby just drags out the uni reading far more than required (see above) and doesn't actually read anything else for pleasure, since she doesn't actually enjoy reading, merely the appearance of being well-read.
My favourite part of this email: Her first question goes straight to the subject of money, greed, capitalism and the apparent hypocrisy of making money while claiming to do things to be helpful and informative. Excuse me while I laugh hysterically at the irony.