<p>Hey all,</p>
<p>I highly suggest avoiding the textbook store if you can. I myself purchased all my textbooks new form the textbook store last year and spent over $550! Second semester freshman year, I used half.com by ebay and spent $118 total. (One of my textbooks came from the library, but I still saved a lot of money)</p>
<p>Yes, the textbook store will have your books if you order them.</p>
<p>If you want to save money, order through half.com or another online textbook store now or within the next two weeks if you want your texts before you arrive on campus. </p>
<p>Textbooks for fall semester have been posted on the textbook store website.
<a href="http://www.dukestores.duke.edu/textbook.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.dukestores.duke.edu/textbook.php</a></p>
<p>I am selling books for Chem 23L, EGR53L if anyone is interested, PM me. Or reply to this and I will direct you to my half.com link.</p>
<p>Even if you don't buy from me, you save a lot! Membership on half.com is free too.</p>
<p>amazon is another good place - personally I buy from amazon and then sell back to the bookstore for a negligible loss</p>
<p>yes, I agree. I don't have an account with amazon, but my friends have had great experiences purchasing through them.</p>
<p>The only trouble with ordering from something like half.com is that sometimes you don't get what you ordered. I've had this happen to me at least twice with half.com. The first one they sent me the international paperback edition instead of the hardcover US edition. They contained the same material but I couldn't sell back the international edition. (plus I was more than a little miffed that they lied in their description as it clearly said US Hardcover Ed.) The other time I ordered a book and it never came. The person had a good feedback rating with lots of entries but for some reason right after I made my order they decided that was it for them. They took my money, canceled their account and didn't ship the book. The process of getting my money back was a nightmare. (had to send messages to a freakin closed account for a month before I was allowed to take the claim to ebay customer service) I did finally get my money back but it was after the semester had already ended.</p>
<p>And this leads me to my point. I wound up without a book for the semester but was able to borrow a friends book who took the class last semester. So the solution (at least for engineers) is to borrow books from your friends. (and also lend yours out, it has to go both ways) I know I treat books I borrowed way better than books I bought and they are free! An alternative is purchasing books from you friends as they are usually willing to sell the book to you at a much lower price than you could find it even online.</p>
<p>Of course this only works so well with engineers because we all take the same classes.</p>
<p>half.com also worries me -- i've had one bad encounter with them, and some girls in my soph yr block did too.</p>
<p>i generally use the duke bookstore, but then again, i generally don't take textbook classes, so the fact that it's a dollar or so cheaper on amazon doesn't matter when i'm paying more for shipping. but using bn.com is also good, esp. if you're a member and are getting a discount. b/c there's always deals like spend $75 or $100 or more and you'll get free things like bags or sweatshirts or nonsense.</p>