QuickAdvice: Chegg Rescues Students Again with All-New iPhone App
Chegg (Free) by Chegg, Inc is the official iPhone app for the popular textbook rental service, Chegg.com.
Look, it's expensive to buy textbooks nowadays. And it seems that renting textbooks is easier to do nowadays, since I can tell you from experience that you'll never get as much back as you paid for when you sell back a textbook. And Chegg has made things even easier for students that have used the service before, or potential students looking for a better alternative than buying expensive textbooks.
Upon launching the app, the first thing that students will see is the Search tab, where you can find your textbooks by Title, Author, or ISBN. If you happen to be shopping at your campus bookstore, you can also scan the barcode and get an instant result. Though I found the scanning to be a bit difficult to use, since you have to be pretty much completely still for the scan to happen. But it's useable, it just may take you a moment to get the scan (at least for me).
Once you find some books for your classes, you will have the option to select how long you'd like your rental for by either Semester (usually 15 weeks) or Quarter (usually 10 weeks) systems, or a 60-day period. If you need any additional days after that designated rental period, there's additional fees, but the standard rental times should be enough.
Some books won't have a rental option, but a buy option. There's only one price for that. And while Chegg has a great selection and will usually have what you need, be prepared for the few items that you need that they won't carry at all.
The "My Books" section will have information on any past and current orders you have placed. If you have returned a book, you can track the shipment from this screen as well, and even find the closest UPS store to drop off your book.
The "Cart" screen will show you your current books in the cart, and display your subtotal as well as your savings from actually buying the books at list price. To pay, you will have to sign in with a Chegg account or register, or even connect with Facebook. I haven't personally ordered my books yet since I'm waiting for funds, but there should be no problems with placing your order.
The app overall is solid and polished. Chegg is a great service for students that are looking to save some money with their textbooks since tuition fees are constantly rising (especially in California). And now with the iPhone app, Chegg makes it even easier for students to save some dough by letting students directly compare bookstore prices and other used bookstores with Chegg's rental prices.
The app surely doesn't disappoint with it's smooth and polished interface, also iPhone 4 Retina display ready graphics. It's the kind of quality that you'd expect from a company like Chegg.
If you're a student and wouldn't mind saving some money, I'd strongly recommend getting the official Chegg app for all your textbook needs. And it has a great price tag too - free.
