Cash for Books Horror Stories
I’m a poor sociology major, that means I hate the bookstore for running such a beautifully executed business plan. The plan is to sell books to students at a ridiculously high price because they have to buy them. Then they use the word “cash” a lot, so you give them the book back for a fraction of the price. Then they re-sell the books to other students who have to buy them the next year. It’s brilliant and I hate them for it.
This semester, I decided I was going to sell back to one of the independent vendors. Anything is better than that monster machine, right? These guys won’t take advantage of students, right? They’re humble small business owners with smiling faces, eager to please a customer!
I decided to sell to the cart outside of Kogan on H St. I buy coffee from the guy twice a week and he always seemed to be a fair man. I gave him five books to scan, and he did so with out speaking a word. After a few moments he said, “five dollars.”
Now, I’ve been screwed on books before, but one dollar a book seemed a little irrational. I told him that I was going to take the books over to the bookstore, but I’m confident he had lower prices, so I’d be back. The following is a transcript of our actual conversation:
Coffee Guy: If you come back, I’ll only give you fifty cents for each of these books. $2.50 then, instead of $5.
Travis: What? Why would you do that?
Coffee Guy: Because I control the prices.
I considered for a moment…and then realized how much of an asshole you would have to be to say something like “I control the prices.” I took my books and went across the street to the bookstore.
It was 4 pm. They aren’t supposed to close until 6 pm. They were closed. I was leaving the next day at 9 am. They open the next day at 10 am. God dammit.
Moral: Don’t sell back to that guy. I probably won’t buy coffee from him anymore either. You can still buy coffee from him, if you want.
Also, if anyone needs any of the texts for the SOC class “Class and Inequality,” I’m your guy.
Any other buy-back horror stories?
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Comments
my favorite is when you go to sell books back at the bookstore and the nice girl who maybe you noticed in your anthro class because she is kinda cute scans in the book for you, gets a strange look on her face and then says “sorry this book isn’t in our system.” isn’t in your system???!!! i bought this fucking book from this fucking bookstore and so did everybody else who took this goddamn class and you are telling me that your little computer system doesn’t recognize a book that a few months ago was an important piece of merhcandise? what kind of a business is this? then she moves on to your books for poetry class, scans one of them and says, “this book is worthless.” now hang on just a minute. that book is not worthless, it is full of beutiful metaphors and exqusite line breaks. i spent an entire semester reading, writing about and learning from this book. it’s fucking poetry for god’s sake. it’s not worthless. “i can’t give you any money for this one.” fine kind of cute girl from my anthro class, fine. screw you AND your bookstore friends.
Yeah, don’t sell to the coffee guy. He makes up the prices. He will bargain with you a bit if you haggle him about a low price, but we obviously don’t have much on our side since we want to get rid of our books. I agree that the guys outside DJ’s are generally better.
There’s also another option: Keep your books.
Unless it’s a textbook, you won’t get more than…five dollars for a book. Usually, it’s much less.
Unless you hate the books you have — which might mean you hate your classes, which might mean you should reevaluate your life because you might be in the wrong major/maybe shouldn’t be in university — why would you sell them?
Is thirty dollars really worth more than knowledge??
In the case of my Logic textbook, thirty dollars was worth more than knowledge, but that’s a textbook: it’s exempt.
Ah, but the only problem is if you take the thirty dollars for your logic textbook and then have to buy the same book again next year for seventy dollars - to take symbolic logic. That was fun. It’s stupid to sell books.
-max
Max, that’s where you’re wrong. I plan to take Friend for Symbolic Logic & he uses a different textbook than my professor did. Even more, I could just borrow your book.
Is there any way to sell back a book when somehow a next edition has come out during the semester so the bookstore won’t accept it and neither will coffee guy?
I sold all of my books back for a whopping $50 at the UConn Co-Op. I really wish I could’ve kept some of them, but with Christmas, I needed some quick CASH!
Also, I spent roughly 150 bucks on it. But in the heat of Christmas Cheer you seem to forget that. That’s why I always keep my Spring Semester books…no pressure to buy chumps anything.
Mishi, there are a lot of book selling/buying/exchanging websites and even facebook applications, some of which are even GW specific. Craigslist is also an option.
[...] from my experience last semester: I decided to sell to the cart outside of Kogan on H St. I buy coffee from the guy twice a week and [...]
Yeah the guy at the cart is a major creep and tends to put your books where you cant reach them when he tells you the price…the people outside DJ fastbreak on the other hand are actually really legit and sometimes buy back books at much better prices…i tend to see if they will offer me a better price than the bookstore cause ocassionly its like 3x more money there if you are lucky…
but the coffee guy i dont go anywhere near him