Students now have another option to consider when purchasing their textbooks.
A new textbook rental service was recently started by Chegg, an online student-to-student marketplace located at www.chegg.com.
It was created to provide college students with a cheaper alternative for purchasing textbooks.
"The bitter topic of inflated textbook prices has been discussed for decades; however, no real sustainable solution has been presented to students," said Osman Rashid, CEO of Chegg in a news release. "We have carefully studied the rental market and significantly improved on previous failed attempts to deliver similar services. [The Web site] provides students a cheaper, easier and worry free alternative to acquiring their textbooks."
This new service is similar to www.netflix.com, an online movie rental service.
Students rent textbooks, use them for a semester and then return them using a prepaid label. They pay a one-time rental fee, unless they want to keep the textbook.
"If they want to buy the book at the end of the semester, if they feel they want to keep it, they can," said Aayush Phumbhra, vice president of campus operations and cofounder of www.chegg.com. "They will just have to pay the balance of the price minus the rental fee."
Students can also return the textbooks if they drop the class the books were rented for.
According to www.chegg.com, students can save up to 70 percent using this service.
"Our concentration has always been to find multiple ways to save students money," Phumbhra said.
If a textbook is not available from www.chegg.com, they will get it from one of their partners.
"We try to have all the books," Phumbrha said. "We have ways to get it from one of our partners, if we don't have it."
They have more than 2 million used textbooks and 800,000 new textbooks in their inventory.
Also, students who are concerned about the environment may be glad to hear that they plant a tree for each textbook rented.
"Trees are used to make textbooks, so we want to give back to the environment," Phumbhra said.
Students can visit www.chegg.com for more information.
Copyright Brigham Young University 12 Dec 2007
