Frequently Asked Questions

You pay the rental price rather than buying the book. You use the book for the semester and then return it to the store by the due date.

You’ll need to give us valid credit or debit card information to store on file. If you decide to keep the book or do not return it for some reason, we will charge you the difference between the rental amount you paid and the purchase price of the book. For instance, if you keep a book that cost $20 to rent and $40 to buy, we will charge the remaining $20 to your card. The book then becomes your property.

Rentals are cheaper than buying. This keeps more money in your pocket. If a new edition of the book is published, you don’t get stuck trying to sell an old edition that nobody wants. Instead, you give the book back to us and it becomes our problem.

You won’t have to go to the trouble of selling a book if you rent it. This makes life easier at the end of the semester.

Unfortunately, no; it just doesn’t work that way. We try to make rentals available whenever possible, but it won’t work for every title. Lab manuals, customized editions, and workbooks cannot be rented. Some textbooks cannot be rented because we know in advance they will be out of edition when we get them back. Over your college career, you might be able to rent one-third to half of the textbooks you need. Renting is good when it’s available.

Yes. Our return policy on rentals is the same as on purchases, with one exception: If we had to special order the book for you to rent and you return it, we charge you a 15% restocking fee. This is to cover our cost of returning it to the supplier.

At the time of rental, we record your phone number and e-mail address so we can attempt to contact you and remind you to bring it back. We attempt to contact you several days before the book is due. If you have a calendar or planner, it’s a good idea to write down the due date in it to remind yourself.

If you decide to keep the book or do not return it for some reason, we will charge you the difference between the rental amount you paid and the purchase price of the book.

By this time, we’ll have probably already charged your credit card and the book has become your property. On a case-by-case basis, we will do one of two things: refund the amount we charged you and accept the book back, or offer to buy the book from you at our current buyback price.

No. Other stores might charge you a fee, but we don’t. This is another good reason to do business with us.

We will try to remind you by a phone call or e-mail message using the contact information you provided when you rented the book. However, things change (phone numbers change, phones sometimes don’t work, e-mail addresses no longer are in use, etc.) so we can’t promise we’ll be able to contact you.

It is ultimately your responsibility to return the book or buy it, whether you hear from us or not.

Sometimes we choose to allow students a few extra days to return books. After the tornadoes of April 2011, we automatically extended rental due dates two weeks. This gave all students until the last day of May. Of course, this was an unusual event.

If you need your book for an extra week or two, please call us at (256) 513-9181 and we'll try to be flexible.

Yes. Please keep markings neat and avoid super-excessive amounts. On the rental agreement, you sign that you will bring it back in “very good” condition.

We’re pretty lenient, but if you bring the book back and it’s been marked up to some crazy extreme or has tons of careless scribbling all throughout, etc., we may treat it as a damaged book.

You could be charged a damage fee. The amount varies on a case-by-case basis. It can be as much as the difference between the rental and purchase price.

Yes, if at all possible. We can look you up by name in our system if necessary.

We rent “Clickers,” also known as “Personal Response Systems,” that are used in some science and nursing classes at UAH. We also rent graduation gowns and graphing calculators. These are the only other items we rent.