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Chegg.com

2 Ratings: 4.5
A college textbook rental website.

Chegg.com is an online textbook rental company in the United States, headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. Students rent textbooks and manage their accounts online at Chegg.com and can also access the site via Facebook Connect. Since inception, the company … see full wiki

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College textbooks as low as twenty dollars?

  • Jan 22, 2010
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Rating:
+4
     College students know the drill. Schools charge you over a hundred dollars for a textbook, then come out with a new edition the following year, making your edition of the textbook obsolete (or at least less-widely used) and therefore greatly diminishing its value, so that even if you were to try to sell it back to the school, you would only get around half of what you originally paid for it. While colleges and universities are meant to provide you with an education, they are still, essentially, businesses.

Trigonometry, Sixth Edition by Charles P. McKeague and Mark D. Turner:
  • University price: $137.25
  • Chegg.com price: $49.49

American Goverment: Historical, Popular, & Global Perspectives, Elction Update, Alternate Edition by David A. Yalof and Kenneth Dautrich:
  • University price: $117.75
  • Chegg.com price: $38.99

Gardner's Art Through The Ages, The Western Perspective Volume II by Fred S. Kleiner and Christin J. Mamiya
  • University price: $148.25
  • Chegg.com price: $24.49
    
     These are examples of the staggering differences in prices between puchasing college textbooks new at the school versus paying to rent them from Chegg.com. The above university prices are only for the textbooks at a community college, so I can only imagine how much they would cost at a private university. While it is true that many colleges/universities offer used textbooks as well, they are still quite pricey, and regardless of how much you pay to purchase the textbooks, there is still the issue of what to do with them once the semester is over. Unless you are interested in the subjects that your textbooks deal with, chances are that after you finish the classes, you will never want to open the textbooks again, and unless you have friends or siblings who are going to be taking the same class very soon, the textbooks will just end up collecting dust.

     At Chegg.com, you have the option of renting a textbook for a semester, a quarter, or sixty-days. You can also extend your rental time, if necessary. While Chegg.com has not had every textbook that I needed in the past, they have a very wide selection, and will more often than not have what you need. Aside from the obvious benefit of incredibly low prices, Chegg.com also plants a tree for every order that you make. Whether or not they actually do this is uncertain, but it is nice to think that they do so. Upon ordering, your textbook(s) will arrive in a matter of days, usually less than a week. Also, returning the textbooks is remarkably simple. When the due-date for the textbooks is approaching, you simply visit the Chegg website and follow the instructions to print out the return shipping labels. You then take the books with the shipping labels to your nearest UPS and mail them back, free of charge. You can also use Chegg to sell textbooks that you have purchased in the past.

     In conclusion, given the benefits of renting over buying your textbooks, I can't find any reason at all to purchase over-priced textbooks from your school. I have never bought a textbook in my time in college, and I don't ever plan on doing so. Chegg is a wonderful website, and perhaps the most popular of the college textbook rental sites, so it is definitely worth a visit. If Chegg does not have the textbook(s) that you are looking for, some of the other sites that can be found on Google may have it. Plus, for every textbook rented, Chegg will donate to the Unicef Haiti Relief effort, and it guarantees a minimum donation of $100,000.

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August 05, 2011
The best thing to do is to get to know the upper class people. They usually sell books as soon as the semester has been completed. Also, check with the student government to find out which teachers actually use the texts.
 
February 02, 2011
I love Chegg- the perfect way to save a couple of bucks when you're in school! I loved how you compared the prices on here so that people could see exactly how much they'd be saving. Have you ever checked out BookRenter.com? They're another great site that lets you not only rent textbooks but, you can rent regular books as well!
 
February 01, 2011
I'm so sharing this on Facebook, a lot of my friends are still in college (thankfully I'm all done)!
 
September 26, 2010
Damn! Should I go back to school I know where I'm getting a book from. Free UPS shipping instead of snail mail media mail for those heavy beasts is even better! Thank you for this.
 
September 10, 2010
As a college instructor who is assigned textbooks rather than choosing them, I sympathize with any effort to reduce costs. As our courses are pushing e-books, and as publishers peddle these to combat the used and now rental options, what's this mean for Chegg?
 
February 03, 2010
Just wanted you to know that I showed your review to a girl I work with. She is a college student about to begin a course this week. Her text would cost $218.00 at the bookstore. She is going to rent it from chegg.com for $70.00 Thanks so much for this valuable review. I am telling anyone who will listen about it! Very useful information!
February 03, 2010
You are very welcome, and thank you for showing this to people to help them save money! I really appreciate it.
 
February 02, 2010
Excellent review! 

I remember the horror of the "bookstore trip" every quarter (my college was on quarters). I hope word spreads about companies like Chegg. Even better would be a coalition of eReaders (Kindle, iPad, Sony, etc.) to reduce the costs of these book by utilizing digital publishing. It would also save some spines cuz some of these books are HEAVY!
February 03, 2010
Thank you. I believe that there are a few places where you can get 'eBooks", so that you don't have to carry around an actual book, but they don't have a very wide selection yet.
 
January 25, 2010
Great review on an important topic. This scam has been going on for decades. Now if I were a dictator...... Sounds like Chegg.com is a great idea. Thanks for sharing this important information with all of us.
January 25, 2010
You're welcome. I'm hoping the word will spread so that colleges will change their ways.
 
January 23, 2010
Not in college anymore but this is pretty good info! I will pass this on. Thanks!
 
January 22, 2010
Wow, why didn't I know about this when I was in college?  Would've been nice to have this option!  I actually rarely ever bought books on campus unless it was a reader that was only available there.  University and community college books are actually comparable in price, in fact, the same books are often used, so I definitely went to off campus sources to buy mine. My main source was Half, where I ended up being able to make some money off of my old books, but had to do some research.  Thanks for sharing! :)
January 22, 2010
You're welcome! I think the whole renting-textbooks idea may be relatively new, which may be why a lot of people never heard of it when they were in school. Each semester, I hear more and more people talking about how they rented their textbooks. If it really catches on, maybe the colleges will offer similar programs, or at least lower their prices.
July 31, 2010
Very cool review. I had no idea this site even existed. Between services like Chegg and the eventual digital book distribution via Kindle and iPad, it will be very interesting to see what changes book publishers make over the next few years.
 
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