My experience at their store in downtown San luis obispo was completely unperfessional and disgraceful the kind of behavior I would encounter from immature adolescent not grown adult especially a manger. I came in to handle a quick errorn and instead found my self be judged, was refused a return that followed all the stores rules. Correct book check receipt check cash tender check within the last week check. I was given the explanation that since my receipt was smugged and the top corner was unledgeable I would only receive a store credit. The receipt was complete legible you could read the item number and see it was in fact the book I had the tender I used cash the totall and change I received all was there except a transaction number that was located in the top corner of the receipt. With all the proof there that this book was in fact bought from there store a week prior with cash was not sufficient evidence for him to return my money to me. I was irritated but shrugged it off and took my gift card. While walking though the store I suddenly started to hear two low toned voice talking no meaning to ease drop but realizing that they people where in fact talking about me. I over hear o ya she came to return a book she had the recept but seemed desperate for cash return she just seems no right to me. So I gave her store credit. Mind you as I walk closer to them their voice get lower and lower. What give them the right to judge me what have I done wrong made the mistake of spending my money at their establishment. Do I need to apologize that yes I was counting on the money for a return. Moneys tight right now covids been hard on most people but thats I guess is something to be ashamed of. I found this overall experience demeaning and unprofessional and rude.

Large with lots of choices. Extensive magazine selection and fun and creatine toys and puzzles

I Gave it 4 stars it would have got 5 stars if I didnt see this at the check out line with bad words on it. I thought of a kid reading this when I read it.

Hard back books, neat magazines. Sure the phones find information. Not like a cooking magazine or book in your mitts. Its for those it makes sense too. The old romanance of the book..

Love the fact my 13year old still loves to read real 📚books not just e - books on line!

It is a book store. Prices usually better online but I like hanging out with books. Just make sure to Google a book before purchasing...you cant judge a book by its cover.

Love the manga selection, although i could barley find any volume 1s of anything. Please restock soon, Staff is nice and friendly.

Its a lovely little thing. And its conveniently near the high school and the Jamba place.

What can I say, its the the Barnes & Noble smell. Its amazing. The staff is extremely friendly and knowledgeable about books

Fun times with 11yr. old grandson. Bought a bonsai plant kit! Having fun with it.

Very good selection and service, with great prices and marked discounts as well. Could compete with Amazon for book-buying needs.

In the middle of summer at 1:30 in the afternoon when SLO is packed full of people there is no excuses for having only 1 cashier open! I waited for 5-minutes, bought $65 worth of books on Amazon, left the books on the table and walked out. The dozen questions you make your cashier ask each customer is massively annoying when people are waiting 1/2 an hour to get out. Hire more people or offer self checkout!!!!

Awesome place to find some new books and old calssics classics

Always a good experience. Daughter loves manga-and they just expanded and improved the section. Cashiers are always friendly and nice to her and she likes to actually check out herself. Good times for a bookstore.

It has a wide variety of books, periodicals, childrens books. All the best sellers.

My first trip there since Covid. Looks like they took out the nice, comfortable seats. It was better when one could page through a book while sitting comfortably. I am a try before you buy sort of person.

The bookstore has most American classics so thats good. one of the girls was kind of rude so beware

I bought a book. I think its still in my back seat unread. But this is totally not B&Ns fault. Friendly and helpful staff

Had a hard time finding the entrance and they didnt carry the magazine I wanted 😢

Barnes & Noble is the best! Gotta love big book stores.

Always clean, organized, and great about special orders! ❤ B&N

Great clean book store found all I needed and more

The ladies were very helpful...

Nice bookstore, very well kept. If you want to browse through some books while drinking a cup of coffee, this is the place for you.

Such a nice Barnes and nobles one of the best ones Ive been too!

Needs a face lift, new bathrooms, and carpets inside and outside the bathrooms because stuff gets tracked into the carpet outside when people leave the bathroom!

They always have what we are looking for, I just wish that they opened earlier in the morning than they do. I know they have some Harry Potter items, again I would enjoy seeing more items since its one of the things I purchase throughout the year. With that said, they are a quiet bookstore, with a calm atmosphere, they always have been and I suspect that they always will be. With Covid-19 pandemic still underway the precaution they use with their friendly staff and their warm welcoming smiles and helpful attention to each patron makes it a worthwhile bookstore to visit.

Bring my grand daughter there alot...she loves books!!!

Very friendly staff. Clean and well stocked

They arent the independent bookstore I hope to shop in mostly, but we often stop in when in SLO. The service in this store was very good and helpful. We had a nice chat with one of the booksellers and came away with a couple of recommendations Im sure would have skipped my notice. The pricing is also good. There is nothing like browsing in a bookstore, big or small.

Love this place just wish there would be more manga options!! Other than that I love Barnes and nobles ^^

Very good I have nothing bad to say about Barnes and Nobles

I have a book addiction and Barnes and noble always takes care of my fix!

Always enjoy visiting here. Little different on a COVID world. Safe, all wore masks and distanced. Found all my books I went to buy.

Ive said it every time Ive visited Barnes & Noble in SLO I love this book store, customer service is great!!! Sales are great and I enjoy the atmosphere.

Really. Love. This. Store. Help keep book stores open. They follow all covid guidelines and felt very safe shopping the whole time.

The employees are toxic. This could be a good place but the attitudes from the employees ruins it.

I enjoy each trip to our local Barns and Nobles store for so many reasons, starting with the fast and friendly service their employees always seem to to have, down to the selection of books. Also located in our Barns and Nobles Bookstore is a Starbucks where you can enjoy a beverage, food all while you read your favorite item. Be it a book, magazine or newspaper. The quiet atmosphere mixed with so much comfort provides for some good reading and if you check their calendar you can even find activities for the children. Its a great down to earth bookstore with lots of great qualitys from an elevator to an escalator that goes up to their top floor. There is even a public restroom you can use during your visit with them.

They may have taken out all the local book stores, and they may not be the cheapest, or site for true collectables. But at least theres somewhere to go to.

Perfectly located... dining, shopping, and parking. Helpful staff, open, and clean.

I love B&N I wish they would not have gotten rid of so many of their stores! Tablets are ok but u go cross eyed after so long reading its easier to read from a.book

Solid bookstore, great selection.

Great place to find books, love to read. Take the whole family and we can each pick out a book we want.

Love this place,well-managed, very cozy and customer service is good.

Has a good bathroom on second floor

I got some cool books

This place is great the staff is very friendly and helpful

Went in to get my wife some coffee at the cafe. Staff was incredibly friendly and the barista was awesome!

Books were good. Had D&D acquisitions incorporated, which was a book I wasn’t even looking for but glad I found

Just like any other Barnes & Noble difference is the bathrooms are pretty dirty.

Great location with a parking garage close by. Coffee inside or across the walkway at Starbucks. You can also sit and enjoy the wifi for free. Great staff and great selection. I often order books online for pickup in the store. Super easy.

Great place! My only hiccup is maybe have some more books on the lesser known languages, like Latin or Enochian. Aside from that, great selection and AWESOME Harry Potter products!

Gorgeous store. A little pricy.

Hard to find anything the way the current layout

Well-organized, polite, courteous, and helpful staff!

As a bibliophile, I LOVE bookstores...and this is one of the few left. I like the atmosphere, and their variety. My one complaint is that they took almost all of the chairs out of there. The younger people can sit on the floor...but Im a senior and I cant. Can you put at least a few chairs back? Otherwise, good luck to you..and long may you wave°°

I always love going here and being here. Great deals on books, especially if you are a member and have coupons. My family and I lose ourselves in all that it offers and spend a little too much. The childrens section is especially nice. The coffee shop can get way too hot on a sunny day though, with the large windows that have no curtains or shade. Not a coffee shop in which to spend a long time reading.

Excellent customer service as always. Even during a pandemic, you can count on Barnes and Noble to take care of its customers. So grateful!!

They were very helpful. There was 1 nice Lad that helped us and took us right to the books we needed. We are old and and it takes us forever to find something . The young Lad saved us alot of time. The cashier was lovely Gal. Very kind and helpful. Thank you

Barnes &Noble are such a deceiving company. Went there with an out of town guest. We both love books and browsing so we stopped by the coffee bar in B&N to get a Starbucks because I have cards for them. Ordered and proceeded to pay with my Starbucks card. Oh no Mam! We dont take that. We are not Starbucks. There are signs everywhere featuring Starbucks. !!. She showed me the little 5x7 card next to to cash register that says it does not accept Starbucks cards as payment. Last time for me B&N. !!!! How about the library, anyone? There you can browse and even check out a book without paying the high price B&N charges . some libraries even allow drinks in the building. Ill stop at my favorite Starbucks first and wonder over to a library.B&N, you are on the way out with deceiving people about Starbucks and the high price of books. I buys books on line all the time for a quarter of the price even less than that.Well got to go. Guess where Im going???????

My daughters favorite place to go. She loves books so we end up here almost 2x a month. However can be a bit expensive. I purchased a book for over $20 and when I looked on Amazon it was $7.99 for the exact same book. Other then the immediate gratification its hard to compete with those online stores.

I always find exactly what I need.

Favorite place to go, love their game selections, and they always have the book I want. I dont even live in SLO anymore but ill still make it a point to drop by when I visit.Great place to stay and read as well. They have a reading area upstairs as well as a starbucks. Even have rearranged stuff to be covid sensitive.

I absolutely love bookstores, and as Barnes and nobles go, this one is superb! Never had the coffee but the staff is great and it is always clean! Make sure to check out all the sale/clearance areas! I can spend hours here discovering new authors and browsing different sections. I have always been able to find good nature/science books and field guides, the sci do section is great, and dont forget to check out all the board games!

Books... I dono theyre cool in person. Sometimes cheaper than amazon. They got a solid kids section... which I like cuz I have kids. If you dont have kids, that section isnt for you. But they have things for everyone who likes and knows how to read

Great Barnes & Noble, on two levels with restrooms and cafe upstairs. Friendly staff, lots of staff on the sales floor if you need help finding anything. Located in a nicely maintained shopping center in Downtown SLO.

Always a good place to go..

A nice place to get a good book of all genres or even just to sit down and and study! If youre thirsty the Starbucks on the second floor can help! Staff can always help and a kid section if your little ones want some time to have fun with puppets or let their imagination run wild!

The entrance is not by the street... Which means we walked all the way around. Also, many use this as a place to get warm and read. Great selection. Two stories with escalator for the second floor.

So many books to look at and love all the miscellaneous stationary, misc. gifts and calendars!! I have never tried the cafe but they always give coupons out for the cafe when you purchase an item.

I could spend all day in a bookstore. B&N has probably every genre in circulation. Theres also a Starbucks upstairs, so you can grab your coffee, relax and read a book if you have time.

Good as always. Cozy space here though

Huge selection and quite a few friendly and knowledgeable employees

Theyve moved things around recently and its really good now. They have a good selection of manga.

Great location near everything downtown. Nice coffee nook upstairs with a great view for reading or working on laptop. Awesome selection of magazines, kids books, and much more. Usually not very busy and friendly staff. Also great prices and sales all the time.

Just like youre regular B&N but its two floors, we stopped in to let a friend use the restroom but there was a line(midday friday), walking around and looking at the merchandise there was a good selection of trinkets, records, and books. Very clean but very busy store. Good size too.

There was absolutely no staff on the floor ( upstairs or down) to assist and when we finally found an info station it was at the end of the checkout line so we were blocking the people leaving. The girl that helped me was pleasant enough however I was looking for 2 books that are Barnes and Noble Classics, they dont carry them in store...what? They are B and N branded! Not a pleasant experience.

The staff provides great service, they helped me find a leather bound guest book for a birthday party that was a hit with the celebrant.Enjoy this great bookstoe while its still around!

Love having a B&N around, my boys love this is store. The nostalgia of going inside a book shop, picking up books, reading some pages before you buy, or even going inside just to read! I love amazon, but this B&N is great! Oh yeah, and customer service is amazing!

Its a Barnes and Noble, and it does exactly what I hope for in any Barnes and Noble: it enables me to buy far more books than I should from people who are also massive book nerds. Hell yeah!NOTE: There are stairs and an escalator (only one, it only goes up lol) in the center of the building to reach the second floor, but if these dont meet your accessibility needs - as they dont for many of us - there is also an elevator on the left side of the store. Ask an employee to point you in the right direction as its location isnt immediately obvious, but I promise its there.

This review is especially painful as my disappointment comes almost entirely from the malice of a single employee. Ill offer the standard preface to most reviews by stating I have been a customer of B&N for over 20 years. I spend approximately $300 per year at various B&N stores- however this will be no more. My main gripe occurred on a Sunday while visiting the San Luis Obispo store. I was tucked away in a corner working on a final touch-up to my resume- sitting next to a power outlet where I was charging my phone. An employee, seemingly driven by a degree of hubris, marched up to me and stated (in an over-amplified tone): sir the power outlets are not for customer use- you may not charge your phone.I think more than anything I am disappointed in this young man and his sad preoccupation with doing this kind of stuff. I realize that this kind of statement is not inherently abrasive however HIS absolutely was. My first inclination was to laugh at him and tell him to get lost, but after a brief pause I realized that anything I could possibly say to him would only affect me.In any event- I will stay away from Barnes and Noble from here forward. I prefer organizations with empathy, not stupidity.

Browsing and getting to take a quick flip through to narrow down my huge stack of choices is one of my favorite things. (Plus I can enjoy the absurdity of being inside a Starbucks which is immediately next to another Starbucks.) 🤣

A perfect way to spend a Saturday mid-morning at the book store. I like their wide selection of magazines and enjoy browsing through the science fiction selection. Overall, excellent customer service.

Nice place to browse and shop. Also has a Starbucks upstairs. So convenient!

It is an average bookstore. Nothing overly bad or nothing really that stands out. The prices of the books are fair and that the cafe that they have in the facility is alright as well. Customer service is good. There is a good variety of books as you would expect from a Barnes & Noble store.

I liked the location of it. Its near food and other stores. Its not as big as others Ive been to, but has pretty good selection!

So few books.

Great location, nice cafe. No outlets for electronics charging. Somewhat limited evening hours, even during summer. Book selection obviously huge, escalator and elevator for ease of mobility between levels.

The store has plenty of books. But very little in selections on music and movies. The store is big and it has a good Starbucks inside.

The array of toys and other merchandise made it difficult to keep my daughter focused on books, but the selection is great and well organised. Having a starbucks in the store when there is one just across is obscene. Space could really be used for other purposes. I wish there were more tables and seating in the childrens section and other areas, as people often take over a whole space and stay for quite some time.

Always a favorite store to visit.

Really enjoy bringing the kids here for books. An in-store Starbucks, and all the books you need, its easy to spend a couple of quality hours with the kids, or finding a book that is just for you. The staff is friendly, but not bugging you about how long youve been there. And should you need a little help finding something specific, there is always someone close by to help you.

Lots of good books, helpful staff, and plenty of nooks for carefully choosing your new additions too :)

Good plave to books and calenders

I dont run into many employees while browsing either level, which is great! (for me) I like how they dont have employees asking questions. They just leave you be and I respect that. :)

They have a good selection. They also have some great toys and games. Upstairs they have a decent selection of graphic novels. Their sale section is always nice and big.

The bathroom is usually pretty awful & the elevator smells like urine most times.. However, they are always well stocked & the store is generally pretty clean and organized.. The employees & managers are hit or miss in both, attitude and helpfulness.. The starbucks baristas are usually pretty nice. Well continue to come back.

Terrible customer service. I don’t like and actually have never posted anything negative about a business but I just left the store and steams coming out of my ears. My wife was looking for a magazine that they carry, we have seen it many times before and it is on the website, we went to the counter which had zero customers and the cashier was on her phone. She was irritated that we interrupted her and that she had to look up the magazine. With a blank face she told us they didn’t carry that magazine and stared at us.. I told her it was on the Barnes and Noble website but she kept staring and repeated her sentence. Get some humans that can have a conversation or have some problem solving skills. I’d rather pay more than go here

Really nice store in downtown San Luis Obispo. Only draw back is parking, but that goes for all of downtown SLO. Store is 2 story and well laid out. Friendly, knowledgable staff.

A fairly medium-large store with two floors. Quite a big selection, too. You could just browse and look at the covers for a good while. There is a café in the upper floor if thats your kind of thing. Overall an enjoyable place to sit and relax.