 "Photo: www.chegg.com")
NEWS
Aayush Phumbhra got sick of spending more than $200 for textbooks. So, in 2004, the then-Iowa State University student decided to do something about it.
“I wanted to find a better way for students to save money they could be using on other things,” said Phumbhra.
Phumbhra got several investors onboard and co-founded www.chegg.com, a Web site where students can rent their books each semester.
Its purpose is to allow students to rent textbooks for less than half the bookstore price. Students send the textbooks back at the end of the semester without having to worry about selling them back for a bad price.
According to Phumbhra, who is the vice president of Chegg.com, students can save anywhere from 60 percent to 75 percent on their textbooks. His company has saved students $106,559,845.86, as of Jan. 14.
Not only is Chegg.com saving students money, it is also helping the environment. For every single book rented, a tree is planted through the American Forests’ Global ReLeaf projects, explained Phumbhra. To date, over 3,000 acres of trees have been planted across America with the help of this organization.
And as if saving students money on their books each semester while simultaneously saving the world isn’t enough, Chegg.com has a new program called Chegg Champions. Essentially, Chegg Champions is geared toward students interested in promoting the Web site, according to PR Manager Angela Pontarolo.
Students who want to participate can go to www.cheggchampions.com and sign up to receive coupons to distribute to their friends. Each time one of their friends uses a coupon code to rent a textbook, the “Chegg Champion” gets paid $5.
Come the end of the semester, all you have to do with your Chegg.com books is put them in a box and send them back, free of shipping charges. Students like Alex Schultz seem eager to try this Web site out for themselves.
“This isn’t bad at all,” said Schultz, a freshman pre-nursing major. “A book I need for a nursing class would be $140 in the bookstore, but on Chegg it’s only $60. I think I would use this as a student, and it could save me a lot of money. The only thing I’m worried about is not being able to write in the book.”
According to their Web site, Chegg.com ensures top quality by sticking to this rule: no “handwriting, excessive marking or highlighting” in the textbooks. They send them out in good condition and expect to get them back in the same way.
By renting your textbooks from Chegg.com, you could be saving $100 or more every semester. Multiply that by the eight semesters of a normal college career, and you are putting at least $800 back into your pocket. Or you could take a page from Phumbhra’s book and put that money toward the ever-climbing price for rent. It is totally up to you.
What in the world does “Chegg” mean?
Chegg.com takes its name from the age-old chicken-or-egg conundrum. Chegg.com’s philosophical take on this is that students need to get jobs, but they need experience. Only, they can’t get jobs without having experience — quite the vicious cycle. Chegg.com tries to help college students save money so they can spend more time in classes to gain the experience they need for the job hunt.
[Source: Angela Pontarolo, PR manager for Chegg.com]
Shopping around
To test out Chegg.com, we compared their rental price for a textbook to the prices of other sellers. The book “What is Life? Guide to Biology” (ISBN 9781429223188) is required for most intro-level biology courses.
Chegg.com:
-Good-condition rental: $42.99 + $4.49 (standard shipping) + $0 (free return shipping) = $47.48
Booksmart:
-Brand-new book: $88.00
-Used book: $66.00
(Sell-back value unavailable)
Amazon.com:
-Used-condition book: $65.95 (cheapest offer) + $3.99 (standard shipping) = $69.94
-New-condition book: $70.00 (cheapest offer) + $3.99 (standard shipping) = $73.99
FAU Bookstore:
-Brand-new book: $106.65 - $53.33 (sell-back value) = $53.32
-Used book: Unavailable as of press time
[Source: FAU Bookstore as of 01/12/10, Booksmart as of 01/12/10, www.chegg.com as of 01/12/10, www.amazon.com as of 01/13/10]
3 comments
booksmart has the book available for $66, you didnt mention shipping so lets make it 3.99(seems standard) and you right at about $70
Awesome 70 bucks in and the semester flies by. Time to get some money back.
Never sell your books to a bookstore, their business model is to get the book back as cheaply as possible, then sell it for way more.
Sell the book on the amazon marketplace. That book you show for $65 is about what you will get for yours minus the amazon 14% commission and your looking at about 55.50 back for the book.
you spent 15 dollars, or you could give chegg around 50 and let them store your creditcard info just incase you lose your book.
do you know what they do if you dont return it? They charge you the entire rental fee and the cost of a new textbook. its a huge scam with a pretty little egg right in the front of it.