college book rentals - Stuff Parents Need

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.

This blog post was written by my younger sister, Laura. She is a junior in college, and she works very hard to make her dollars stretch. Check out what she has to say about investigating an option to rent books through Campusbookrentals.com. Oh how I wish this had been around 10 years ago when I was in college!

Every turn you make, it seems that people today are trying to find more and more ways to pinch every penny and stretch every dollar. Being a college student, if I have a penny to pinch to begin with, I’m doing great! Student loans, gas money, food money, and a wedding to plan are all tugging at my financial strings right now, and hello…it’s expensive!

One thing that tends to always sneak up on me towards the beginning of every semester is buying my text books. You’d think I’d remember that I’m going to have to fork over around $400 every semester just for textbooks alone, but it seems to always catch me off guard, and there I am, wondering how in the world I’m going to get the materials I need. $400 doesn’t exactly come easy around here! The process of buying books on campus is stressful aside from financial reasons as well. I can’t tell you how many lines I’ve stood in waiting for a text book so I can be a lucky one and get a used copy. I also can’t tell you how many times I’ve been forced to buy a BRAND new text book because I wasn’t the lucky one in line to get a used copy. So annoying!

Last semester my university started to offer the option to rent your textbooks. Basically, you pay a slightly reduced price off of what you would pay for a used copy of the text book, and you must return the book in excellent condition within a set amount of days from renting. You do not get any money back for the text book when you return it. I sort of looked into this option. I didn’t look very hard at it, because the rent price was still too high, and I figured It would make more sense to just buy a used copy (fingers crossed) and then sell it to a friend for close to the same price I paid for it. Overall, I figured it would be cheaper for me to just buy. However, a lot of my classmates took advantage of renting their textbooks and seemed to be pleased with their results because they felt like renting was their cheapest option. Whatever floats your boat, right?

But it seems that there is an even better option! I recently heard about an online textbook rental company called campusbookrentals.com. I thought It wouldn’t hurt to go online and check out some of their prices and see if they might make renting textbooks a more feasible option for me. Before I checked out the prices at campusbookrentals.com, I stopped at my university book store to price some of the books I will be buying for the Fall semester. Let me begin by saying that renting from this company is DEFINITELY something I will be doing. I’d be silly not to! I’ll let these figures speak for themselves:

Marketing Research

My bookstore: rental price $107.97

Campusbookrentals.com rental price: $37.59

Savings of $70.38!

Business Logistics

My Bookstore: rental price $120.99

Campusbookrentals.com rental price: $76.64

Savings of $44.35!

Consumer Behavior

My bookstore: rental price $92.60

campusbookrentals.com rental price: $25.59

Savings of $67.01!

Who wouldn’t want to rent from this company?? Campusbookrentals.com also offers some unbeatable deals as far as service goes, too. Shipping on all textbooks is 100% free both ways. That’s right, FREE!I also love the fact that this company seems to truly understand and meet the changing needs of college students. They understand that things may go wrong, and that professors may change book editions last minute, or we may decide to drop the course all together. The site has a 30 day money back guarantee that will cover those instances. That’s much better than the 4 day return period at my university bookstore! Also, they offer a 15 day grace period in case you need to hold on to your book a little longer during finals. That’s pretty generous in my opinion!Finally, I love that you have the option to rent your book for a whole semester (130 days), a quarter (85 days) or for the summer (55 days). That’s certainly the most flexible renting system I’ve ever seen used! Although I have not used this site yet, I am so excited about this company! You can rest assured that I am already making out my book list, and as the Fall semester approaches, I will be using campusbookrentals.com, and will probably be using them for my textbook needs until graduation!

If you are currently enrolled in school or know someone who is, be sure to check out this site. I was extremely impressed with the prices and policies of the site, and really wish I had known about them sooner!

Disclosure: I received a 50% off coupon to put toward a future purchase in exchange for my honest opinion. The opinions expressed here are strictly my own.