Web site offers students an alternative in book buying
■ On Vivasmart.com, students compare prices for new
books and use classifieds to sell used books
By Mason West
for the Emerald
When buying books, many Uni
versity students want to find the
easiest route.
“The UO bookstore was the sim
plest way to get my books,” junior
Charles Kosydar said. “I didn’t re
ally have time to spend looking
around just to save a couple bucks. ”
But now University students
searching for a bargain have an
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other alternative.
Vivasmart.com is a free Web site
newly available to University stu
dents. The site helps students to
compare prices on books at more
than 16 different Internet book
stores. Students can enter the re
quested textbooks by title or au
thor, and a list is displayed,
showing the price for new and used
books — depending on availabili
ty, shipping and handling costs
and approximate delivery time.
If students want to find their
coursebooks on-line, they can use
the University Bookstore's “book
hunt” server at uobookstore.com.
Vivasmart.com was originally
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created by Thai Tran and Amr
Awadallah, two Stanford Univer
sity students, as a senior project.
Launched at Stanford during
spring 1999, the site became a
huge success in a few weeks, and
the founders began to get e-mails
from other campuses across the
country requesting their service.
The majority of the staff at Vi
vasmart is made up of either cur
rent students or recent graduates.
“Vivasmart was created to help
student consumers ‘live smarter,”
Transaid. “Our textbook compari
son shopper offers student con
sumers more than just the most ex
pensive choices that initially
appear to be convenient. ”
Although Vivasmart does busi
ness with many different compa
nies, it maintains a merchant-neu
tral policy and gives no preference
to any of the companies they list.
“We’re working hard to make
the site as comprehensive as pos
sible,” said Rachel Polish, Vivas
mart marketing leader. “We’re try
ing to provide the highest service
to students. It is a very honest site.”
Polish said hundreds of stu
dents nationwide are able to use
Vivasmart through their universi
ty and more schools are being
added each day. The site identifies
what school a student’s from
when logging on by detecting a his
or her “edu” domain.
Aside from offering these ser
vices, Vivasmart also offers stu
dents a board to post classified ads
so that they can sell their used
books to other students directly.
Posting an ad is free of charge, and
the ad will only be available to oth
er University students.
“I think that's really cool,” fresh
man Katie Howard said. “You pay
so much for your books and then
the bookstore doesn’t give you
much back.”
Yet there are potential dangers
to buying books on-line. The
Smith Family Bookstore, a local
used-book store, warns that there
are problems related to the length
of time it takes to receive on-line
books, how much shipping and
handling costs and whether a stu
dent can return books.
But Polish said Vivasmart
works to prevent such problems
‘by making shipping and handling
cheaper for students who order
multiple books. However, return
policies are individual to the com
pany through which the books are
ordered. Also, return time and re
turn shipping and handling costs
are individual to the company.
In addition, Polish said Vivas
mart does not display the time it
takes to process orders, which
could be an extra one or two days.
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