College Students Trade In Textbooks, Stuck Waiting For Cash

(Ben Balter)

For college students, it’s a wonderful thing to find a store willing to pay more than a pittance to buy back the textbooks you’ve been pretending to read all semester. People who discovered the Boston-based site Valore Books were happy with the estimates they got for the value of their books, but less happy when their checks failed to show up.

There are plenty of complaints online about every business, but Valore has an awful lot, including complaints to the Better Business Bureau. One student shared his saga with the station, explaining that he sent off his books in December, then spent weeks calling the company, asking about the whereabouts of his money. He even offered to stop by their nearby office and just pick up his books, but that was one of the last things the company wanted.

After a Better Business Bureau complaint and waiting for another whole semester, he finally received his money. Yay?

The BBB of Eastern Massachusetts told WBZ that Valore is “as one of the most complained about businesses in [their] territory.” As an online business, it receives complaints from across the country, but that’s no excuse.

What is their excuse? Sure, every textbook-related business experiences crunch times in approximately August, December, January, and May. That’s the nature of it. WBZ couldn’t get an interview with anyone at Valore, but did receive a statement from the company. Their excuse? Business was too good this past spring. The company explained:

Our competitive sellback prices created greater than expected demand this spring, which unfortunately led to some payment and customer service delays in our process. However, all customers have been made whole by either receiving payment or having their item returned to them. When we have been unable to return an item to a customer who has requested it, we have issued payment as a goodwill offer. To date in 2014, inquiries to the Better Business Bureau have represented fewer than .1% of all sellback orders on our site, and while a very small percentage, we treat every one of them very seriously and have resolved each in a timely manner.

While a startup that aims to get students more money for their books is an admirable business, the part where you actually get checks into customers’ hands is important. Remember that, aspiring entrepreneurs.

I-Team: College Students Say Local Textbook Company Is A ‘Scam’ [WBZ]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist