According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, college texbooks prices have increased at twice the inflation rate over the past 20 years with students spending an average $1,000 a year on books, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Fortunately, there are several textbook rental companies in the market place ready to save cash-strapped college students, some serious money. Three companies were comparatively studied by the Wall Street Journal for prices, availability, ease of return, buyback options etc; they are: Bookrenter.com, campusbookrentals.com and chegg.com. A fourth company, textbooks.com doesn't rent books, but with its guaranteed buybacks, acts like like one.
In general, the study shows that renting books is cheaper than buying, be it used or new with the prices of books for shorter semesters, lower than those for longer ones. That goes without saying that if you plan to keep a book longer than one semester, you may be better off buying it.
By comparison, not only books rented from Chegg.com were the most expensive of the three, that was also the only one who charged sales tax.
One general rule is to keep the rented books free of damages otherwise you could be charged the full retail price.
For more, see WSJ.com
Friday, July 31, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey, Great post!!
Dont forget internet textbook giant eCampus.com, they offer rentals and ebooks along with a vast selection of new and used textbooks for sale. You can search through their selection of rentals here: http://www.ecampus.com/rent-textbooks.asp
definitely agree, eCampus is the best! I tried chegg and was having problems so I thought I would try something else out. a friend told me about them and I loved it! the prices are already cheaper and plus she gave me her code EE15007 and it saved me 5% on top of that. you should try it out!!
Post a Comment