Here’s a guest post from my younger sister, who is wrapping up her time in college. She has a BIG tip for saving money on college textbook expenses, so if you are in school or know someone who is, listen up!
As a college student, buying textbooks each semester can be a total and absolute chore. You’re often faced with insane prices, brand new book editions (so you can’t buy used copies), not to mention a shortage of used copies, crazy professors that change book editions last minute, terrible return policies, limited freedom to highlight in the text books, and of course, the long lines in the book store. Every experience I had for the first three years of my college experience were no different at all. The consensus was always the same – buying textbooks was dreadful, and I never once looked forward to it. However, going into my senior year of college, I was introduced to a seriously wonderful online textbook rental company called campusbookrentals.com.
Until then, I had never rented my textbooks before. My university had just recently introduced renting as an option, but I never took advantage of renting my books because the purchase price and the rental price were hardly any different at all. When you buy your books, you can sell them back to the bookstore when you’re finished with them (if you’re lucky and get there early) or you can sell them to other classmates and make some of your money back on them. However, when you rent your books, you return them in nearly perfect condition and receive no money back for them. To me, that option never jumped out to me. This, however, is certainly not the case with campusbookrentals.com. The rental prices are SIGNIFICANTLY better than the ones at my bookstore, and I knew once I saw those prices that I would be foolish not to use campusbookrentals.com.
To put their prices into perspective, listed below are some of the prices of the textbooks that I will be using in my final semester of college. In my opinion, these price differences speak volumes!
Organizational Behavior
My bookstore rental price: $88.55
Campusbookrentals.com price: $34.49
Retailing
My bookstore rental price: $98.00
Campusbookrentals.com price: $32.01
Marketing Management
My bookstore rental price: $87.20
Campusbookrentals.com price: $36.02
Another awesome quality about this company is that shipping on all textbooks is absolutely free both ways. This is one thing that really stands out about this site, because so few other companies offer this! The amounts of savings you’ll get by renting with campusbookrentals.com is quite significant, and when you’re a college student, everywhere you can save seriously helps out.
Campusbookrentals.com also really seems to understand the different needs of college students. Their rental periods are extremely flexible – and much more so than the four day return period my book store offers. You have the option of ordering your book for a whole entire semester (135 days), a quarter semester (85 days) or for a summer semester (55 days). There is a 30 day money guarantee, which is incredibly helpful in those instances when your professor decides to change book editions last minute, or if you decide to drop the course. There is even a fifteen day grace period at the end of your rental time in case you are late returning them or need to hold on to the book slightly longer to study for finals. Also, you can highlight as much as you want! Even the word “highlight” is forbidden in my university book store.
I certainly am glad that I used campusbookrentals.com last semester, and I look forward to using them again for my final semester of college! I have even gotten my roommates to use this rental system, and they say they are never going back to our bookstore again! I just wish I had known about this company a long time ago, because the savings, glace periods, and flexibility are certainly hard to beat. If you are enrolled in college or know someone who is, I highly recommend using this company for your textbook needs! They even offer a $5 bonus if you refer a friend!
Disclosure: I received a coupon to use at Campusbookrentals.com in exchange for providing my honest thoughts and opinions about the site.