I can now officially proclaim my love for Amazon.com. I liked it well enough before, but after becoming a college student again, I realize my like had become love.
Prior to enrolling in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, I used Amazon mainly to order items I couldn’t find elsewhere. Items like an Indiana Jones outfit for my son or a hard to find book for myself. I also took advantage of some of the site’s daily deals no store could ever beat. For example, on Black Friday last year I ordered a couple of Playstation 3 video games for less than $8 each, whereas in the store they were each more than $30.
But I wasn’t an Amazon junkie, unlike some other people I know. I’m not a fan of waiting for items to arrive in the mail, even if it only takes a week or so.
This probably stems from the days of my youth when I had to wait four to six weeks for anything ordered by mail to arrive. I remember ordering an Emperor Palpatine “Return of the Jedi” figure after collecting the necessary UPC codes to get it free, and then checking the mail every day for literally two months for it to arrive. And don’t get my started on the Columbia House cassette (yes cassettes, and not CDs) club and the wait involved with that. I prefer getting something I want from a store where it’s essentially same-day delivery.
As I’ve gotten older, though, my patience has increased, right along with delivery times. So ordering something by mail isn’t the horrible thing it once was to me. And now it’s gotten to the point of love.
That’s because I saved a whole lot of money ordering one of the textbooks I needed for one of my classes through Amazon.com. When I went to the university bookstore to get the text, my mouth dropped when I saw the price – $90. Fourteen years during my undergraduate studies, textbooks at most were $60.
Knowing another option existed, I went home and fired up Amazon. The book I needed was available, at an even more mind-numbing cost of $120. But looking closely, I noticed that was the price for a new book. Used copies were available for as low as $14.
That couldn’t be right, I thought. Just $14. No way. Life can’t be that easy. There must be some sort of catch.
There wasn’t. I hesitantly put in my order for the book, and received confirmation I would receive the book sometime between Sept. 22 and Oct. 1, which was later than I hoped, but much better than paying $90.
Fortunately, Amazon’s predicted shipping date was wrong, as I received it on Sept. 8, one day after my first class and in time to use it for the next week.
I would have probably finished my undergraduate degree debt free if Amazon.com had been around back then. I remember paying $300 to $500 a semester for books, some of which it seemed as though the professors didn’t bother to have us read.
Even more upsetting was the pittance of money I got back when selling them back to the bookstore. “This edition won’t be used next semester, so we’re only paying $3 for it,” the bookstore person would say about a $50 book. For poor college students, this was a huge scam that allowed us to see how the real world operated. It’s probably the biggest reason my entire generation is so skeptical.
Hopefully kids in the current generation won’t be so skeptical. They don’t have to pay high textbook fees if they don’t want. Although they might still have to deal with professors who make them buy books they’ll never need to touch.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, Sept. 23, 2011.
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