Are the Real Deals Online? Dealoz Review

  Dealoz is my favorite website during back-to-school season; not only does it relieve that anxiety and pressure I feel when scrambling around trying to find my required textbooks for my upcoming classes, but I also find all my required textbooks for a decent price.

Books are essential to enhancing our learning experience, and yet so many students are discouraged from purchasing textbooks due to prices. In fact, according to the article Are College Students Buying Required Textbooks, “75% in US Say No,” by Publishing Perspectives. Nine out of ten students find textbooks too expensive, resulting in 76.6% of US students making the decision not to purchase the required books. This number is surprisingly high when there are many alternative sites online.

    Dealoz, for instance, is a student-oriented site that does exactly what its name implies, deals for textbooks, and yet so few students know of its existence. Not only does this site facilitate your tiresome endeavors of finding the right books for all your classes by aggregating well-known and reputable websites—such as Amazon, Abebooks, Barnes &Nobel, eBay, and Chegg to name a few—but it also compares prices to assure students pay a minimum amount for books they will, most likely, only need for one semester.

Now, many students might be worried about a couple of things when trying it out for the first time. Rocky Perez, for instance, is a freshman majoring in Criminal Justice who—when asked if he would consider ordering his books through this website—claimed that he, “Would try it out” but “[He] hadn’t really looked into it.” Maria Lopez, transfer student and English major, also declared that she has ordered a few books on reputable websites before, such as “Amazon or Abebooks,” but when asked if she would try Dealoz, she displayed some reluctance and restated that she preferred Amazon, because “if you don’t have Amazon Prime, it takes longer.”

Both freshman and transfer students have valid concerns about ordering their materials online: doing the research necessary to make an educated purchase online and ordering in a timely fashion. They did not know, however, that Dealoz consists of more than 594 online stores which includes reliable sites that have a relatively fast shipping rate, and it saves the user time and unnecessary research due to its straightforward setup. From the four semesters I have used and relied on this website, my books have arrived in under a week.

Another major concern might be the school itself. If many of the student clientele shifts from the bookstore to online. It seems as if lately, everything has slowly but consistently entered the digital world and shopping is no different. The fear that more students will take their shopping needs to online bookstores is a reasonable one, but I do not necessarily agree that this will heavily affect the campus bookstore’s profit. I believe that the more students look for books online, the more likely it is to reduce that staggering number of average college student in the United States who do not buy books while not gravely affecting the bookstore. There will always be people who like shopping in person and prefer its convenience; looking through the shelves and cracking a book open to reveal its smooth and old-scented pages will evoke a feeling that the online browser could never replicate. The bookstore has plenty of advantages which will draw in and retain plenty of faithful customers who prefer this type of fully present shopping, but if your major concern is still the price, then online websites such as Dealoz is the way to go.

If you are not yet convinced, let us look at a professional’s opinion in the matter: Sandra Bozarth, associate librarian and coordinator of the Affordable Learning Solutions & Textbook Affordability, a program meant to encourage faculty to choose low-cost books or open resources altogether—stated the following about the purchase of books online, “Students buying their books elsewhere is a positive thing … I think that would encourage the bookstore to lower their prices or provide alternative lower cost options.” Not only does online shopping offer more options for students on a budget, but according to Ms. Bozarth, it also encourages healthy competition for our on-campus bookstore.

I, as well, felt hopelessly disoriented, as well as anxious about the fast-moving pace classes that required the book for the already due assignments my first semester in college. That feeling of foreign responsibility for something that my high school used to provide me with suddenly weighed heavily on my shoulders, especially after seeing the prices for each book. Fortunately, I have an older sister who helped me out. Although at first, I admittedly could also not help but feel skeptic about a site I had never tried or even heard of before. I encourage you all to try out Dealoz for at least one book and determine for yourself if this is the website for you.