Renting your textbooks?
I recently came across a website that lets you rent your textbooks for a semester (or quarter or summer). It’s called Chegg and you actually rent the book and send it back after you’re done. They boast that you can save up to 80% and help the environment. For every textbook that you rent from Chegg, they will plant a tree.
I tried it out and got an art book for the fall semester for only $50. Used ones even from Amazon were quoted at over $90. Chegg sometimes orders the books from resellers (such as Amazon) and has them sent directly to you (in the case that they didn’t have any on hand). You can do some light highlighting, but no writing in the books. It’s a pretty good service and I’m happy with it so far. The book arrived about four business days after I placed the order.
10 Responses
Wow, I will have to try this out next semester. I spent close to $500 on books for three classes (the other two I was able to get on Amazon). Ridiculous.
This is a great service, especially since students always seemed to be strapped for cash. Good way to encourage saving money in order to pay down on the student loans. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve noticed some times with just a little more searching you can find used or even new international copies and other discounts that make buying books alot cheaper then renting, and you can do whatever you want with the book. The best service i’ve found so far for this is Bigwords.com. The reason I think they’re the best is that they compare many items at once, and calculate the best combination of stores to buy at, including coupons and shipping. They also let you include or exclude international editions, and even renting is an option through Bigwords.com. They let you choose the ship time and then calculate the lowest price using the right shipping type at every store. Pretty neat huh!!
I would have to agree with Evan. I’ve used bigwords.com to buy my textbooks for college the last two semesters and each time I was so impressed with how much money I was able to save. I just saved $273 this last semester by using that site. I’ve never used this feature before, but I’m pretty sure that you can rent books from bigwords.com as well. I’ve never tried chegg either. Might need to look into that for next semester. Just throwing my two cents out there about how happy I’ve been using bigwords.com.
My school rents textbooks too, but only a select few popular ones.
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Another popular alternative to buying book are E-Textbooks. They’re really convenient. And if you haven’t already you should definitely check out the new Vegas show by Criss Angel. It looks interesting…youtube.com/cirquelasvegas
What a great idea?! Renting textbooks! Wish I’d have thought of that first.
Jan 13, 2009
Feb 3, 2009