GRRRRR!!!

I wrote a post about this on my other blog over a year ago---about getting dinged on textbooks for college. Since Big Kid and I are both students, we've bought some from Alibris, some from the campus and everything has worked out ok since then.

This semester, so much has been going on that for expediency's sake we just bought them from the campus bookstore online. We typed in the classes, the required books popped up and we were able to get them used.

But even used, Big Kid's books for 2 classes were almost $300.00.

When they got here, we examined them, but didn't take the shrink-wrap off the ones so encased (learned about that the hard way a semester ago).

One of the books was a dinky little paperback---81 pages---and cost $65.00. What the heck did it cost when it was new?

So Big Kid logs into his new class yesterday (his are through the college system on the Internet this semester) and finds out that the dinky book isn't a required textbook, but optional supplemental reading.

AAAAIIGHGHHHH!!! Are you sh*tting me?

We went back to the campus bookstore website, typed in the class information, and yes, the book was listed with the required textbook. No "optional" option available. And since you can't log into your class until the scheduled time at the scheduled day, you don't get any course material information to find out that no, you don’t really need that expensive little scrap of crap.

I thought, “Well, ok, we’ll send it back with the packing slip/receipt”.

Ha! To get a refund, I have to drive down from the mountains into the city, to the campus bookstore within a prescribed time, let them inspect the book, show my driver’s license and the credit card it was purchased with to have credit applied back to my card.

What if Big Kid was on his own—something we hope will be a reality in the near future? He doesn’t drive. There isn’t any public transportation down into the city from here. As a person with a disability, would he have to pay $45.00 each way by taxi into the city to return an overpriced book that cost $65.00?

And I know I’m nitpicking, but they aren’t going to refund any of the tax or shipping charges we paid, nor the gas expended to drive all the way down there if we don’t have a reason for driving into the city at that particular time.

$65.00 might not seem like a lot to some people, but if you don’t qualify for financial aid and you’re paying for 2 college educations, every little bit counts!   What a racket!