Online Bookstores Beware

So...

My venture away from college bookstores brought me to online, and there were a lot of websites that offered books for okay prices. I thought it was great as many would even buy them back. But then you gotta always read the FINE PRINT and understand that online, you cannot be guaranteed what a books condition is going to be.

"Brand New" "New"  "Like New"  "Good"  "Acceptable"

Well these words are up for interpretation, especially on textbook websites. Brand new being most expensive can be used by people that want to sell you international editions, which is fine, except when they are the same price as a standard edition and may be missing exercises you NEED. But its not a big deal with the IE is the same as the standard in content and is much cheaper (but its not often the case on these 'textbook****.com' websites). The biggest issue is you never know what you are going to get from many of these websites, and sometimes you think you are getting a standard edition or a certain edition (like first, second, fifth) and you get the wrong edition. Not many of these websites have guarantees if you get the wrong book - Lame.

So I said to hell with buying from these websites what about selling back (because the cool thing was that you don't have to sell to them, to buy from then)....well here comes the FINE PRINT. MANY of these jack and ape textbook buy back website say we need your book first, and then we will give you a price, but if its not in good condition, we will destroy the book... yeah that sounds legit. More like you will say my book is in bad condition, say you destroyed it, then sell it without giving me a dime. And some are honest, they will return your book if you would like if you don't like their quote, but many times you have to pay that return shipping, because you did just waste their time. Understandable. But its sort of a scam. They convince you to send your book, you send it, you are stuck getting the small amount of money, or nothing, or paying return shipping, or if you are lucky back where you started with your book, no loss, except the time it took to send it in, with less people to sell to because the next semester is closer.

I'll admit it. I fell for one of these once. I ended up with a dollar from one book. The rest were 'destroyed'. Right...

But the internet is not all bad (see my next post)...