"Two bad experiences semester after semester. First they wouldn't fix my account or email me a return label. Second I ordered a book and no status is available. I mailed and got no answer in return. They take your money and don't care if you're missing assignments in class because your book won't arrive on time. Ridiculous! Last time dealing with this company. Back to Amazon or Chegg. "

"It's been 3 weeks and I still haven't received my books. I ordered a few hundred dollars worth of books and did not receive a confirmation email, which I thought was strange, but proof in my bank account that they took my money. Went to my bookstore the day before school to see if my books were in and nothing. Well I needed those books right then obviously, so I spent another few hundred dollars on another set of books that they had left in the store. The lady said my order wasn't full filled apparently, but once the books come in I can do a return process and get my money back, and now since they knew what was going on they would fix it and I would get a confirmation email. A week later and still nothing. If I don't get my money back in the next week, I'm considering it stolen and taking it to a higher power."

"Do NOT rent books, if possible, through eFollett. They collect a great deal of very sensitive personal and financial information and there is no option to cancel the account on their website, even if you have no returns pending.

Note: They do claim that they have an option to delete your account on each of their websites, but it is unavailable on the site I had to use. That is false advertising.

I have spent days searching for an option to delete my empty (no books pending) account, to no avail. My campus bookstore was unhelpful as well."

"I needed a book in a timely manner, so I called the store that would be filling my order and asked how long it would take to get my book. Unfortunately, it was close to closing time so my order wasn't going to get filled that day, but that orders are always checked first thing in the morning, so as long as I placed the order that night, the book would be on it's way to me the next morning. I had my book in two days! The person I spoke to on the phone was the person who filled my order. She emailed me personally before the store was even open with a tracking number for my shipment so I knew that everything was taken care of. Never had better service ordering online."

"DO NOT ORDER FROM HERE!!! Absolutely ridiculous. no one EVER answers the phone or emails back when you have questions. More importantly, they don't ship the day you order. I selected the 2nd business day shipping on my book, and they waited to send it for 3 days, and then it was the weekend, so supposedly I won't get it until Tuesday, which is almost a week from when I ordered it. "

"efollett.com is a terrible, TERRIBLE company. My son's college contracts them for course books and supplies and the obscene way they jack up the prices should be criminal. I didn't know any better when I was buying books for my son's first semester, but for this upcoming semester I decided to price compare on Amazon.

What would have cost me $408 on efollet.com cost me $246.57 through Amazon. That's roughly a 40% difference in cost!

With college already being almost prohibitively expensive as it is, you would think that companies like Follet would do their part to keep at least some of the costs down - and given the number of schools that contract them they can certainly afford to. But noooooooo. Screw the parents and screw the students. As long as they make maximum profit, that's all that they care about.

If I could rank them NEGATIVE stars, I would."

"DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!! I wish I had read the other reviews prior to selling some of my books back. I processed a buyback on December 21 and mailed it to them via 2 day mail to speed up the process of my payment. Here we are almost the end of February and I do not have my check. First off because I sent it in 2 months ago, the address I was having my check mailed to is no longer in relation to me as it was my previous employer. I emailed the company immediately to inform them of this change of address and it took them over a week just to respond stating the check had already been mailed out and they would attempt to contact their accounting department to ensure the check has not been cashed then they would re issue another one. Well lucky for me I am still in contact with an employee at the address the check was supposedly sent to. It's been 2 weeks since it was "sent", still no check had arrived at the address I provided and Efollett still refuses to help me out in any matter. They won't even give me a telephone number to contact someone and will only strictly email. This company is full of a bunch of idiotic imbusals who shouldn't be working in the first place. "

"Dishonest company. They claimed that the book I returned was the wrong book and that they sent it back to me, but they weren't able to proof it. They threaten to send me to a collection agency if I do not pay the full amount of the book. They are not even willing to take the rental book back even if I sent it to them now. I never heard from them that they received the wrong book, so this is the first time I am hearing from them, so basically they want me to pay the full book amount or else they would send me to a collection agency.

Stay away from this company. You will save yourself a ton of money anyway by ordering from Amazon."

"I placed 2 orders for student materials, one for solely books, the other for school supplies, through the eFollet campus bookstore online and viewed and purchased items on the site that were supposedly "on sale". I placed the order and was given confirmation and a shipping invoice to print. The order status was listed still as "in process" far beyond the promised shipping date, with a message emailed to me that the items were backordered, and would be shipped soon. This was the order status for three weeks, to my disbelief. The other order for overpriced used books was processed almost immediately. I tried doing a used book rental on the order to save money, because I saw this was an available option, and I had done this online before, but the site wouldn't allow me to, forcing me to take the more expensive "purchase used book" and not "used book rental agreement" option as I wanted. So I paid more because I had no choice but to, as it is required to purchase books and materials from the campus bookstore when using financial aid monies allotted to the student.

With the other order still in process and the other fulfilled, I decided to go to the brick and mortar bookstore on campus to pick up the one available order, and inquire about the one pending. I was given the book order, and told the other was not processing, but had been canceled due to being
"out of stock". Yet immediately the store rep offered what was essentially the same product, but a different version at a higher price, and sold it to me.
I perused the store and found that items were indeed in stock and when I got home I found I was still being charged for the order still processing, as it had not been canceled, even though they had sold me an in stock replacement item and requested that follet cancel the order. There is no option to do so on their site, order changes must be handled in store. I contacted the store to request the order be canceled again so the charges can be removed and was told by a very rude manager that she could not do this since the item was shipping from another store miles away. I insisted the manager contact that store and have them cancel it and provide me with confirmation or I would contact the the proper agencies to investigate the matter, and we ended our conversation. Within minutes, the manager contacted me stating that the order had been canceled and was suddenly apologetic and cooperative.

What I am seeing discussed on this thread is what is called "bait and switch" tactics (google it) which are illegal in any form or variation for a business to perpetrate on a customer. Do not downplay your complaint or allow the company or anyone to make you feel as though you have a minor gripe. Immediately contact your consumer affairs bureau, the State Attorney General's office, BBB, state and local representative to report unsavory business tactics.

When the consumer abuse issue involves public education funds such as federal grant monies (including pell), scholarship funds, contact the US Dept. of Education Office of the Inspector General, office so that a thorough investigation of your claim can be done. By reporting fraud, scams and consumer abuse (especially in the case of cash-poor students) you are not only helping yourself, but others, who would more than likely deal with the same unfortunate experience. Your dollar is power, use both wisely and to their fullest potential.

Did you know that higher ed institutions and the companies they contract such as Follet to provide resources, are reporting to the fed. government that students are almost solely responsible for financial aid fraud, without inclusion of unsavory business practices perpetrated by the companies that scam, mooch off of, and overcharge student consumers of learning materials? If we don't advocate for ourselves, this will continue and the matter will exacerbate. We lose by continuing to patronize schools and business that contribute to the problem.

Good luck to you in your academic pursuits. "

"I ordered a used book to pick up in store. The website through my campus says there was a used one available. I go to the bookstore on campus and I'm told it's a brand new book, there are no used copies available. Ok....class starts this week. I call efollett (after searching endlessly for customer service number...I would keep it a secret too if my service was so terrible) and this is the conversation:

me: I'd like to know the status of my order
efollet: It's "in process".
me: So what does that mean?
efollet: Someone is putting it in the box and getting ready to ship it.
me: Who is? Where is it shipping from? What is the lead time?
efollet: oh, we don't know that...

So who does know? The campus bookstore doesn't know either. No one would help cancel my order. Apparently, if and when a used copy becomes available they will charge my card and ship it out.
Well, of course a used edition will be available eventually, everyone in my class will return theirs at the end of the semester."

"Absolutely pathetic service and overall company. "

"I'm in wholehearted accord with the other reviewers, this company is TERRIBLE! Don't use their buyback service; they offer a certain price for your books, you send said books then they decline to pay you the amount you've agreed on. They told me that one of my textbooks, one in pristine condition as far as I could tell, could inexplicably no longer be accepted. When I asked for the book back so that I could sell it elsewhere, they refused, citing their policy that once you've sent them the books they can pretty much keep them and not pay you for them! This all occurred, by the way, nearly a month after they received my books, ignored my emails and repeatedly transferred my calls to the "buyback department" voice-mail; of course, my messages were never returned. I count myself lucky to be finally getting any money from them, of course it hasn't arrived yet.

By the way, in case you don't heed my advice: they don't publish any numbers and they absolutely WON'T give you the "buyback department's" phone number, so here are a couple that I dug up after a great deal of research:

***-***-**** general customer service from what I can tell
***-***-**** who knows? the 'some lady who works close enough to the buyback department to physically walk over and see why they aren't answering the phone and then come back, offer to transfer you, but refuse again to give you the phone number and ultimately hang up on you' department "

"I ordered a used copy of the text for my Statistics class from efollett on 10/31/11 to be shipped Priority Mail. I called twice to track it; today is 11/20/11 and their customer service ***-***-**** CST 7a-9p put in a request to send it (hopefully) via express mail to arrive 11/23/11. Today is wk 5 of an 8-wk online course. Warning: call their customer service to discuss shipping of your text book asap & make them track the progress....really poor shipping information on their website."

"1/28/2009
I shipped my books to efollet.com for resale. It has been a month and I have not heard from them. Last week I sent an email asking if they had received the books, but they did not reply. I had to go to their website to hunt down a customer service number (it's 1-***-***-****). I spoke with a representative, who told me that during the busy season, it takes a long time to process orders, and that my books had not yet been checked into the warehouse.

So efollet.com loses points for (a) not responding to my email, (b) not providing easy access to a customer service number(I had to search for it on their website - it should have been included when they sent the initial email confirmation of my order), and (c) not giving any type of estimate on how long it takes to process an order. If it takes a month or longer to process an order, they need to inform people of the potential delay.

Firstclassbooks.com, on the other hand, mailed me a check within two weeks after I had sent them a book, so I'll use their service for future book resales."