With the high cost of buying textbooks, most college students turn to textbook rental companies to save on their minimal fund. Textbook rental sites have ballooned over the years and each one offers great deals to entice college students. There are several factors that you have to look for when doing textbook rental comparison. Registration cost, shipping cost, rental periods and book selection should be your priority. Most of the top players in the textbook rental industry only differ slightly when it comes to these important factors. It will be up to you to do a little more research by asking fellow college students regarding their experiences with the top textbook rental sites.

Doing a textbook rental comparison is easy if you know where to look for them. Just by typing top textbook rental sites on your search engine will yield thousands of results but there are only a few sites that are often mentioned and recommended. They are CampusBookRentals.com, Chegg.com, BookRenter.com and eCampus.com. These 4 are the top choice of most college students because of their good track record and cheap rental fees.

Signing up to register is free for all of these sites. For shipping, only CampusBookRentals.com offer 2 way shipping, meaning, they will ship it to you for free and you can ship them back after the rental period is up for free too. The other three only offers one way free shipping. That is when you return them after use. Rental periods also differ for each rental site. CampusBookRentals offers 130, 85 and 55 days; eCampus have 130, 90 and 60 days; Chegg offers 125, 85 and 60 days and BookRenter have 125, 90, 45 and 30 days offering. Your choice would depend on how long you need the book in your possession. The number of books available on all sites vary. Chegg has the best reviews for book selection. A large selection of books will make it easier for the students to rent them from one site. This is a plus factor for these rental sites. Prices for the books differs. It is up to you to check out each site and compare their prices. If the rental price is your priority, then all other factors will just be secondary to the price. Getting from different sites is also a good thing to do as long as you eventually end up saving more.

Another factor that you have to consider is the physical condition of the book. Some of these textbook rental sites limits highlighting and note taking on the book itself. This is better for you so you can read them better. Too much highlighting and notes will only confuse you when you are studying. Most sites charge fees for books that are damaged, with missing pages, excessive highlighting or anything that would make it unsuitable for other renters. It is wise to check your rented book as soon as it arrives. You wouldn’t want the damages be charged to you even if you were not responsible for them. Now you know what to check, a quick comparison will be easy for you.

 

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