<p>Hi. I'm ordering books with my DD now for next semester. What if they are sent now? Do they hold them? At the res hall? At Trabant? At Perkins?</p>
<p>Through Amazon, the books seems to be coming from all over the place (I have them in my cart; haven't ordered yet). Saving lots of money though as compared to UD bookstore.</p>
<p>Does this work out ok for the students? </p>
<p>Anyone have suggestions? Please let me know. Thanks.</p>
<p>I’m fairly sure they will hold them at Trabant, that is where packages go now, except for USPS, which should go right to the package rooms at the dorms.</p>
<p>I’m have a terrible time getting my son’s books this semester. I am usually really good at finding bargains but this year he’s taking 300 level business classes (except for one 200 level accounting) and he’s got some custom stuff and the prices are around $100 a book. Two of the classes have International editions, I am going to buy at least one of them but the other I saw reviews which said the page numbers were different, which has me a little concerned (although I am guessing most profs just say to read chapter x and do not go by page numbers).</p>
<p>On the bright side, I did sell a number of my daughter’s law school books from last semester for around what I paid for them, and a couple of my son’s books as well. I actually got more than I paid for 2 of them because I had gotten a good deal and they were now in short supply.</p>
<p>I should have been buying books in mid-December, prices were lower then. Right now you’ve got kids from other schools going back and prices are on the rise.</p>
<p>I did have my son order all of his books used at Delaware Book Exchange as a fallback in case I cannot find a deal on one or more of the books. Worst case he just shows up and cancels the order.</p>
<p>If anyone has BUAD 301, 306 or 309 books to sell, let me know :-).</p>
<p>As your prize for reading this far, here is a link to my current favorite textbook price search engine: <a href=“http://www.directtextbook.com%5B/url%5D”>http://www.directtextbook.com</a></p>
<p>Trabant would be convenient. Just wanted to make sure they hold them.</p>
<p>My issue is with the math textbooks. Three books for about $600. One book alone is over $300. This is for a basic freshman math class (probably her last math class ever). I have found good prices for her other books and even found a place to save on two of the math books but one book is over $300 and I’m having no luck in finding it for less. Any ideas?</p>
<p>My mom used to teach at a community college; going to see if she has any inside connections even though she was not in the math dept.</p>
<p>We went through the same thing with the math books last semester. It’s insane, particularly since her professor sent out PDFs of practice sets by email and they didn’t get that much use out of the books. She did sell them back for a decent amount, but I can’t remember exactly how much.</p>
<p>Did you do the fall housing deposit yet? I misplaced the postcard with all the dates on it and am now confused.</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about a fall housing deposit - but, then again, I am currently out of town and haven’t seen my home mail since last Friday. Wouldn’t that come up on the student’s invoice? I know I paid winter tuition and there was no mention of fall housing deposit.</p>
<p>We got a lovely postcard back in December with all the dates for housing deposits, housing open houses, housing surveys. And I have now lost it, idiot that I am. Arrrrgh!</p>
<p>@LINYMOM, what ISBN are you looking for? Did you try the search engine I posted? How about ebay? Is there an international edition available?</p>
<p>I found two on textbooks.com by googling the isbn numbers. Couldn’t find the third (most expensive) anywhere. I didn’t go to ebay though. Will try that.</p>
<p>Can you repost the search engine here?</p>
<p>So I wanted to mention our book pickup experience today. I had found all but one book online for my son (got 2 International Editions, one of which was used because I had concerns about page numbers in that one and the seller told me they were the same). Anyway, my son had pre-ordered his books at Delaware Book Exchange, but you can just tell them which books you want when you pick them up (I actually had found the last one online as well but could not find a good quality copy for less than the price in Delaware). We got there at 2:15 and I figured it would be a zoo so I ran over to DBE while my son started to move in. Much to my surprise, there was only one person in front of me, and I was out of there in 10 minutes. Got a like-new copy of the one book we needed (it is a UD-specific book) so I am hopeful that I will be able to get roughly the same price when I sell it at the end of the semester.</p>
<p>My son is in Harter (on the Green) so we parked in the pay lot in back of Lieberman’s and I walked through that building to get to DBE. There was a line of people stretching out the door into that walkway between the lot and the street) at Lieberman’s waiting to pick up their books! My son had checked and DBE was cheaper than Lieberman’s (although they all claim to match the others) so we got a better price AND I did not have to wait . When I went back to my car, I saw people with Barnes & Nobles boxes moving it. They were the real suckers. Only thing I messed up on was forgetting to ask DBE if they validated parking, as many stores on Main Street do. Turns out it only cost me 50c for about 45 minutes.</p>
<p>Moral of the story: have your students pre-order their books from Delaware Book Exchange. There are often coupons, not sure why my son didn’t have one on his order, although since I ended up at under $100 it might not have applied. The girl in front of me got 10% off her $250 order.</p>
<p>I guess we must have just beat the crowd. We got to Lieberman’s just before 2:00, had a very short wait (inside) and S got his pre-ordered books quickly. We got 10% off for having prepaid. But the best part was finding a space in that parking lot! :)</p>
<p>DD didn’t get back till about 5 pm today. We ordered all books online (Amazon and Textbooks dot com) so she will have to go to Trabant tomorrow to pick them up. We’ll see if this worked for her…</p>
<p>I had all of my son’s books (other than the DBE one) shipped to the house since I had plenty of time to get them (the one advantage of the long winter break). I even picked up a used TI BA-II Pro financial calculator on ebay.</p>
<p>That lot is great, especially if you’re in one of the dorms on the green. We could have pulled into the alley behind Harter and parked for free but having done that at move-in, I decide it was worth paying a dollar to pay in the real lot. Had I remembered to ask at DBE, it might have even been free.</p>
<p>Report is in; looks like I did fine ordering from the various online sites. DD picked up her books at Trabant yesterday (various packages) and she is all set (and I saved $150!). Now, if she just didn’t have to bring her huge Amer Lit textbook to class every time…</p>
<p>Thanks for all your advice here. At first, I thought the “safest” place to order books from was on campus, but the cost-saving measures - although a little time-consuming - are worth the effort.</p>
<p>this post is very much “after the fact” since the kids have been back for weeks now. i began buying for my kids on amazon a few years back. i HIGHLY recommend as you can really get got deals. i then set up an account and sold them and on many (at least 75% of the time) occasions, sell them for what i’ve paid, if not MORE!! i also recommend having your kids email the professors confirming editions because often the will tell the students that they can order earlier editions if they get them cheaper. i have saved myself soooooo much money!!! happy shopping and then selling!!</p>
<p>I agree on older editions, but if you can get a really good deal on the later edition and plan to sell it, you will end up better off because the resale value will be better.</p>
<p>I just went through a rather unpleasant situation with one of my son’s classes. The professor did not bother posting the book in advance so it looked like there was no book required. On the first day of class he told them the book they needed. He claimed it was because he was on a study abroad trip in January but that does not explain why it was not posted in December like everyone else’s was. So I had to scramble to find the book. To the professor’s credit, it was not the latest edition (which just came out) but the book was still pretty expensive. And none of the bookstores on or around campus had the book! I asked my son to ask the professor about the previous edition, but was watching a copy on ebay. He ended up saying the earlier edition was ok, but by that time I managed to win an ebay auction for a like new copy of the International Edition of the correct version for $36. But it doesn’t end there. The seller did not respond to my emails and their Paypal account was not verified and they had not picked up the money. Then I found another copy that was $29.99 for the US edition. So I pulled back payment from the first copy (since it was not a known Paypal account I could do that) and was going to try to win the other one. Then the first seller finally responded and apologized and said she Could mail in Monday, but I told her that I was bidding on another copy and would let her know on Sunday night if I still wanted it. Then last night, two people really got into a ridiculous bidding war on it. It went up to $102 by the time it closed (30 bids by one person, 7 by the other), which was amazing because it wasn’t much of a deal at that price! So I paid the first person and she is mailing it this week. Fortunately, it does not appear that my son has needed the book yet.</p>
<p>At $36, I paid a little more than I might have been able to get the earlier edition at, but I should be able to sell it for much more than that, unless everyone switches to the new edition. I will have to make sure to sell it as soon as the semester ends.</p>
<p>So my last transaction took an ugly turn on Sunday. The seller I bought from had problems with her Paypal account, as I had previously mentioned. I helped her get that fixed and she said she’d mail it on Monday. Then around noon she told me that she had sold it previously, and the payment from that transaction just hit her Paypal account before mine so she felt obligated to sell it to that person (I suspect it was for a higher amount as well). I don’t fully understand what was going on since the sale was not found when I searched in ebay by her seller id, so it had to be at least 2 weeks earlier. Anyway, she refunded my money plus an extra $4, but that wasn’t going to help me get the same edition, since I had gotten a great deal and what was available now was going for twice what I paid (and I did not want to spend a lot of money because there is a new edition just out and I am afraid the value might drop on the previously current one). I decided to buy the previous edition, since my son’s professor had said it was ok. Sadly, the sellers on Amazon all had almost no feedback to go by and did not respond to my emails. I finally ended up buying one on half.com for $29 including shipping, after toying with renting it for $18 (I was actually on the final order page when I got the response from the half.com person I had emailed).</p>
<p>Hopefully I will be able to make some money back on this after the semester. The good news is that I ended up with the hardcover US edition, as opposed to the softcover International that I had originally purchased from ebay. And I left negative feedback for the seller, as I had told her I would when she originally told me about her problem. So much for her 100% positive rating. I suspect that the person who (allegedly) bought it originally and whose payment she just received the night she got mine had already written the purchase off and bought another copy, and she’ll be having problems from that one as well.</p>