Text-book buyback
 

Dont you love it when you spend $300 on new books and when the semester's over you get this response,
" I'm sorry, we are going to be useing a new edition next year. You get nothing back!"

The best was this the Humanities text that the bookstore sold out of, had to wait a week for the book to get in, spent $90 on it and now when I try to sell the bastard they tried to give me $3 for it! What the hell! For the headache that I spent trying to get the book i'm gonna keep the bastard!

sell them on www.half.com

some other school out there is probably still using it!

i got nine dollars back for all the books I bought. :(

I work at my school's bookstore, so I know all about the buybacks. A lot of times you get nothing for the book is because there is a new edition. Other times, the professors haven't requested their books for next semester, so that lowers their value. And the last reason you get nothing back is that some books just aren't being used anymore.

It truly is a pain in the butt. But please don't take your frustrations out on the clerk! We have nothing to do with the prices. :) And I know how you feel because I'm a student too.

I just got from the bookstore. I got exactly $20 for $350 dollars worth of books....that's some messed up sh*t....

Atleast I can go out tonight and party that my semester is OVER!!

I've actually had pretty good experiences with this...usually I get 85 dollars back on $200 in books. By the end of the semester, I'm just so excited to get the damned things out of my life that they can give me 50 cents for them.

I notice that social science texts, at least in my department, tend to be used over and over again.

My first semester freshman year I spent nearly $400 on books and only got $100 back. Since then I follow these rules.

1. Wait as long as you can to buy the books for a class especially the ones with like eight books. I wait to see If I actually need the book or if it is for reference use only.

2. Most of our professors keep books on reserve in the library. I go in there and check it out, not only does it save me money but since you can only check it out for an hour it makes me actually use the book rather than let it sit in my bag unread.

3. I'll always buy used, if I can.

4. If you know what classes you are taking next term buy the book from a friend of yours for five bucks more than the bookstore will give them It'll still be cheaper than buying a used copy from the store, your friend gets five more dollars and next term you can sell it back and get more than half of your money back.

It is really cheap of me to do this but hey when books are $75++ if you can avoid buying even one that's quite a bit of money.

What really pisses me off about the bookstore at Fresno State is that when they discontiue our books they buy them back for $5 and turn around and sell them to anoher school for $35+.

Kenny

I spent $180 dollars on books for my 2 classes this semester, and when I went I went to sell them back, they offered me $1.50 for one of the books, and nothing for any of the other ones. Grrrrr.

The same thing happened to me..............so go to TextbookX.com.
I made about 50 bucks off 3 books, even though there are still a few I couldn't sell. Was very easy, too.

I used to sell my texts privately (those that I didn't want to keep as references) to people who were taking the same course the next semester/year. Did pretty decently that way.

A few of my professors used lecture notes rather than hardcover textbooks. Sometimes they were online; other times you had to go and buy what amounted to a stack of paper (sometimes bound, usually not) for between $5-$20. That was sweet :) except that you then had to sit there hole-punching everything and putting it into a binder.

I once took a course where the prof was writing his own text, so he made us buy drafts of the text at about $10 each. By the following year, he'd published the text, and the poor students had to drop $200+ each on it. Nor could they reuse the drafts, because he'd changed the problems. :rolleyes:

Im glad I am not the only one who has dealt with this...

GRRRR for a while i thought it was only my school...

this year i got 40 dollars back for almost 300 dollars worth of books....

so i took that 40 dollars and spent it celebrating at the local bar that the semester was finally over....had to turn that bad thing into a good thing :D

For all of my law texts sI spent about $1000 last semester - and they don't buy those back at all. Plus, b/c LA hs a fferent type of law than the rest if the US, they wouldn'tell too well online

i was thinking ealier today that i wanted to start this thread. this morning i took 15 books to the bookstore. i walked out with eight of the books and sixteen dollars!! i was pissed! i had a brand new book for my education class (a new edition for this past semester) that i paid $100 dollars for. the lady at the counter said that she cant take it back because there is new edition coming out in june! WTF?! so now i am starting a collection of textbooks that i have to keep:rolleyes:

dont you love it when a text book is only worth $.50...great now i can buy half a coke can:mad:

Everyone, seriously check out selling them on half.com and/or amazon.com
And for buying too.
It's really easy, and you definately get a lot back for your money.

I listed 5 review books last for my law classes, when I came home this afternoon, 2 had sold already.

What you do is don't sell them back! You really won't miss the $16, right?? The book store will make hundreds off of your books though. If all you get back is pocket change, I say tell them never mind. Screw them like they screw you!

Cool. How does that work?

Well I know at textbookx.com you enter the isbn number (above the bar code) into their site. They come up with a pic of the book and the title so you know its accurate. You answer a couple questions about the quality of the book and set a price. They even give you the avg. price on the site so you can make a competitive deal.
Then, if anyone wants it you get an email, and either give the site your credit card ## to credit you $$$$ or they will credit your bank account but that takes longer. Print out the mailing label that they make for you and that's it! Send it media mail and you're good to go.

on www.half.com you just enter the ISBN # and click the button to sell yours. It's really quick & easy! I have successfully sold books there before!

Last semester, I got like 50$ back from books. That was the most I ever got! :eek:

one year ago, i sold my books back and got something like $110. what the heck happened to those days?!

What she said!
You use your ebay name for half.com if you have one. It's REALLY easy to do.

At California State University Long Beach, I usually got a pretty good deal from my textbook buybacks. Though, I remember one year I had to buy a brand new (used wasn't an option) $90+ anatomy textbook. When I took it back they told me they wouldn't buy it because they were getting a new edition next year. I DON'T THINK SO. New edition? Puh-lease....it's not as if the composition of the human body has changed, and it's not like there were any exercises in the book.

Anyway, on the whole, I used to get back a nice enough price to make it worth it for me. Otherwise, if they didn't offer a good price on a particular book, I just took it home and kept it for reference.

My last year or so, the CSULB bookstore responded to student complaints about textbook prices and buyback rates. So, the bookstore started guaranteeing a minimum 50% buyback price on certain texts. So, when you went in at the beginning of the term and saw that your textbook had a "50% back guaranteed" sticker on it, you could feel more confident about buying that particular text.


.....Kelly :)

Can some enterprising young attorney please take these textbook companies on in a class-action price fixing suit? I would truly love to see those people suffer:D

lol I was thinking the same thing.

I was wondering.. can this really be done? At my school (and the last university I attended) they would buy back the books for like $20 and turn around and sell them the next semester for $80. And that's a "Used" book!

That's why I turned to half.com !!!

Hehe, i laughed when i read that- I just finished learning all about class action suits (took my final on it yesterday).... unfortunately I have a few more years to go before I'm admitted to the bar. And class actions are hard as hell to put through........

But it would definately be something that i'd love to see go to court.

For years business have been taking advantage of young people in all sorts of ways, exercising semi-monopolies over us.

I need to look into another class action suit that's actually in the making for a company taking advantage of young people- one of the chain stores like Express or American Eagle is getting sued because they make their employees wear that season's clothes. The employees aren't making very much over minimum wage, so when you subject the money they need to spend on the clothes to work there from the amount of money they're making, they're making well less than minimum wage.

Whoever got the idea to bring that to suit is a genius. I was offered a job at American Eagle in HS, they were going to pay me more than the usual starting wage b/c I had a lot of retail experience (TJ Maxx), but it was still less than what I was making at TJ's, AND i had to buy their clothes. Nope, I thought that was shady, and I still think it is.

Sorry for the hijack! ;)

That's why I hate teeny-bopper stores!
 

I'm frankly not surprised that AE, Express, and stores like that have gotten away with that for so long. I think most of them believe that their workers are teenagers who would buy the clothes there anyway--so the kids, who are working for pocket money and would get minimum wherever they worked, are working for the discount. I guess it only becomes tragic when adults are working there. Bah.

I know the Gap doesn't make you wear THAT CURRENT SEASON'S clothes--although you do have to wear Gap stuff. But, since they tend to sell essentially the same staples season after season, it wouldn't be a bad investment. I wouldn't do it for stores like A&F, AE, and Aeropostale, which are just trendoid places to begin with.

I banked this semester. I had bunches of books from last semester too and I got $139 back....yippie. I went shopping!

Re: That's why I hate teeny-bopper stores!
 

This is CCOMPLETELY off the thread topic but.... :)

I worked at GAP for over 3 years - we ALWAYS had to wear that seasons current clothes. If it wasn't on the floor - don't wear it! Basics, like khakis and jeans were fine - but shirts had to be current. But we got a 50% discount on a certian # of items each month - so it wasn't that bad.

Re: Re: That's why I hate teeny-bopper stores!
 

Because you worked at GAP you lose the thread.

Game over....

Hey, when people started saying energy prices were inflated in Cali (they were), suits were filed and should be won in most cases (if the companies are still around).

Textbook companies on the other hand are not nearly as careful to hide the fact that you pay almost as much for their product as you do for tuition. Their prices keep going up and up and up... has the cost of paper or textbook author really risen that much? Last I checked a prof would contribute a chapter at no profit to themselves in many cases!

We have 2 bookstores in the area. Do they compete? Hell no. Prices exactly the same unless one of them runs out of something. Then the price goes up on the one that still has it.