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Tl;dr: I spent more than 2 hours and $429 on a book thats as thin as a pancake.

I needed to go to my campus to pick up my textbook from the school store for my Software Management class. The bookstore is in the building next to the construction site. I had to park on the opposite side of the campus and walk the 2.3 miles to the store, stand in line for 20 minutes to have them tell me that i need a printed out class schedule. I had to walk all the way back to the building next to where i parked to print out my schedule in the library. I then walked all the way back to the bookstore, and the line has maybe tripled in size. I stand in line nearly an hour to have them tell me that they no longer had rentals available for my book, even though i reserved one (they thought it was cool to just rent it to someone else apparently). So instead of paying $45 on a rental, i payed $429 for a brand new textbook that looks like a magazine. Its stupid thin, i could probably read and study it all in less than a week. Thinking of this, i ask the cashier about return policy. She says i can't return it, but i can sell it back to them within 10 days of purchase for about half the price i paid for it. I walk the 2.3 miles back to my car, decide to sell the book on Amazon or something after the semester, and once again leave my campus angry. I cannot wait to be done with this place.

Comments
  • 3
    That made my soul hurt. 400 bucks for a fucking book? Why
  • 2
    What book is that?
  • 5
    I guess that book can make you pass through uni in a single night
  • 7
    I'll never understand how americans put up with such ridiculous prices for tuition and textbooks. That single book is more expensive than all the textbooks I've bought in the last three years combined
  • 2
    I had always heard that textbooks are expensive, but I though they would then at least also be expansive
  • 1
    @C0D4 Its called 'System Analysis and Design in a Changing World' and comes with an online access code for something (which i dont need for class) so i think the priced was raised due to that. Yet, they didnt offer any that came without the code so who knows.

    Textbooks are very expensive. I had to pay over $500 for my Java textbook (i couldnt rent because I needed it for longer than a semester) but that thing was as thick as a phone book. This new $429 textbook is the smallest textbook ive ever had and the second most expensive
  • 4
    Wow, so fucking expensive!! 😱

    In my uni (Italy) the most expensive book was around 80€ (~100$) but had more than 1000 pages, and was not obligatory since most of our courses can be studied from notes and PDFs made by professors or students (to allow everyone to study without ever buying a book if they can't afford them). Moreover rental is free. And for many books you can even find scanned PDFs if you search carefully.

    Your rental alone costs more than the average price of our books. That sucks
  • 1
    Did you try amazon? Or online places that rent/resell them? I am finding it for about 20 as a rental. Rental options are really nice. I am also finding it for 240 new(still pretty steep)

    I really feel like you were played :/
  • 2
    @endor might as well man, we are already getting robbed with how ridiculously over priced school is
  • 4
    @AleCx04 I was definitely played. I typically can buy from Amazon for better prices but it didnt work out for me that way this time.
    My school is basically one giant bully. We dont find out what books we need, how much they are or how many we need until first day of semester (yesterday). Each individual class gets to decide the deadline in which you must have the book by, or else they drop you from the class and you cant take it. My lovely and kind teacher required that we have the textbook by today. This literally left me no choice except to buy the book at the campus store today, since Amazon cant fulfill it that quickly, or drop the class and delay my graduation date.

    This is the same school that tried to tell me I dont get a grant because I make over $90,000/year, when they HAVE AND ALWAYS HAD my employment papers as proof that i make $13,000/year.

    The school embarrasses itself.
  • 2
  • 1
    @meowijuanas fuck those assholes :( i reay hope you see better days and that something good comes from this
  • 3
    @Dimmerworld I looked online yesterday for an available pdf and must not have looked hard enough because i didnt find one. Your comment literally makes me wanna cry; I could have saved so much money today if I had just found that same pdf that you did. Im gonna just go to bed now
  • 1
    i read often that muricans need super expensive college books for some online codes that are required for the class held by a tutor who probably participated in the aformentioned book.

    There is a certain sense of what is right and honor in my life, but i think this ends when someone wants 400 Freedombucks for a "pancake book" from me.

    If you dont need the key, cant you not just pool the money with other collegues. Its literally cheaper to buy one copy and a laser color printer/scanner with duplex scanning ability for the price of three of them and then "fire murder terrorist pirate" copy the shit out of it. You have to de-spine the one copy you have thought. But this seems like the most senseful solution.
  • 1
    @meowijuanas for future reference: libgen.io (or look up Library Genesis on wikipedia if your dns blocks the domain, the ip address is there).
    It has almost every book you'll ever need and then some, freely available for download (sometimes even in e-reader formats).
    Also: look up Sci-Hub if you ever need academic papers and can't find them on libgen
  • 2
    @Dimmerworld i dont use google as my search engine, instead i use ddg. I just didnt look well enough, because you are right. I was able to find a free pdf after going and searching again.

    @endor very helpful information!! Thank you, ill bookmark this for future use :)

    @BurnoutDV i wouldnt be opposed to this idea at all, but this class is online and i have no idea who my class mates even are nor where they are located. I imagine this option might not be the easiest thing to put together
  • 1
    @AleCx04 thanks for the kind words :) all will end up well
  • 0
    @meowijuanas in that case my propose course of action is unwieldly. I imagined it a bit like my studies, i tight knit group of 10 to 15 engineers that are connected via 3 peer groups that stayed this way almost the entire bachelor and master courses.
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