Before You Swap

Before swapping please read the information below as a great start up guide to enhance your swapping experience.

Membership Service Fees

Text4Swap.com's membership for the first year is FREE. Credit card information is not required when registration. At the start of every year following the first, members are required to pay a super low $10.00 membership fee. Membership fees are used to achieve various tasks including promoting Text4Swap.com, donating to our members’ schools student activities, to enhance our swap system, etc.

So what if your book is worth more?

A popular question asked by many people who we have shared the idea of book-for-book swapping with is, "What if my book is worth more than the one I found a swap match for?"

Our Answer

The first and most important thing to note is you decide what swap matches to accept, and/or make. So, you are not obligated to swap for a book that is worth less than the one you are swapping off when such matches are found.

Secondly, we expect once students spread the word about Text4swap.com and approach the development of the site's network as a movement against high cost textbooks the network will become so widespread most students will find positive matches for their books every semester. Thus, it most likely will not matter how much each book is worth because students will only pay the Text4swap.com $10 service fee for most, if not all, of their books.

On the other hand, when students have to buy books for the following semester, getting enough money from selling their old books to buy the ones needed for their new courses become a concern. Fortunately, the students who join and share the word about Text4swap.com will in the near future not have to worry about trying to find the extra money needed to buy books for new courses every semester.

Publishers are often changing book editions. How much does that affect swapping?

Another question that has been raised is, what about when the edition of books are changed, students have to buy new books, right? Yes, they have no other choice. However, we believe once swapping becomes popular students will not have to buy new books as often as they have to now because of edition changes. One of our key objectives at Text4swap.com is to eventually be able to, along with student leaders, approach key state legislators to push for a restriction on how often publishers change book's editions, and to require publishers to give detailed information on when new editions will be issued and exactly what changes are included in newly issued editions. With such policies books will be kept in circulation longer making swapping more effective.

With more students benefiting from swapping, the more persuasive the argument of adopting policies which will extend the circulation of used books will be to state legislators. Therefore, students play the most important role in the process, which is to spread the word about swapping so that more students will swap. Seeing thousands of students benefiting each year from swapping, legislators will most likely acknowledge swapping is an effective cost saving option for acquiring textbooks. Thus, in advocating for the adoption of policies and practices that will extend the circulation time of books, legislators will be acting in the best interest of all the families' of college students who live in their respective constituencies, because they will each save hundreds if not thousands of dollars every year.

Making the Swap

Text4swap.com allows students to decide how exchanges are carried out. However, we strongly recommend students send books through the United States Postal System (USPS), or a private courier service such as Fed Ex. Text4Swap.com allows students to select one of the recommended shipping methods through their Shipping Preferences option located under their account settings. When Swappers select a shipping method Text4swap.com searches for matches with others who indicate they wish to send and receive their books with the selected shipper.

Also, by sending books through any of the recommended mediums above students can acquire a shipment receipt, or purchase a confirmation receipt in the case of books sent through USPS, all of which may be used as proof of shipment and/or as a tracker for all books sent.

Text4swap.com NEVER Closes

We know it is quite obvious websites are pretty much always available and therefore never closed. Nonetheless, we are compelled to explain how our system works for you. As soon as you list the books you want to swap the system does a search and brings up the results. However, crossing your fingers may not work the magic on your first attempt every semester, because there might be no matches found just after posting. What you must know though is other swappers are constantly adding and updating their lists. So, once your books are posted it is possible other swappers' requests will match your posting soon after it is added and different users will send you requests to swap.

Such a scenario is as follows:

• 12:00 PM: John lists his books and no matches are found
• 1:00 PM: John goes on Youtube to watch some videos
• 1:15 PM: Sarah lists her books and finds 3 matches, two of which links to John
• 1:20 PM: After reviewing the description of John's books she sends him a request to swap
• 1:30 PM: John finishes watching the Youtube videos and recognizes he has an e-mail notification from text4swap.com showing he has two swap requests
• 1:35 PM: John checks out the description of Sarah's books and accepts her swap requests
• 1:36 PM: John and Sarah has two less books to worry about!

Your School Information

When you initially sign up for your account you are required to enter your school and major information. It is important to change your information in the event that you either transfer to another school or change your major. Also, you should change your expected graduation date if for any reason you will finish your degree requirements before or after the originally registered date. All the mentioned changes allows for better matches and links to be made within the Text4swap.com network.

For example, another swapper who is studying the same major as you may be pleased with their initial swap between you. As a result, he/she might look for your lists of books by selecting your username from his/her swap history, or by messaging you from the Text4swap.com system to find out what books you have available.

Most importantly, we donate 10% of all students' service fees back to your campus, so you must ensure you update your school/campus so your donation will go to your most recent school every year.

Making an Offer

We at Text4swap.com know that sometimes getting a textbook is a matter of life or death. Class starts next week, or the professor has already sent an e-mail informing you to start reading and you do not have the book. Therefore, if an exact match is not found for your posting you may not be so patient to wait for other swappers to send you requests.

Have no worries! Being well aware of such situations Text4swap.com allows you to make an offer to any user who has the book you need. When you list the books you want the system will show a list of swappers who have those books regardless of whether or not you have a book they need. You can view these books and make an offer to purchase them. Once the owner of each book accepts the offer you can then purchase and have the book sent to you immediately.

Procrastinators LOSE. (Period)

We know that things happen and sometimes it is extremely hard to get around taking care of our books before the first week of classes. However, many times it is not a matter of being too busy, but a case of neglect because of being too distracted by other things happening while we are on break. The result of leaving our books for the last minute is paying too much in the book store or having to pay express shipping fees online because we need the books before it would get to us by regular shipping.

Though you may be able to bargain more through making an offer on Text4wsap.com compared to opting for the traditional buying and selling, a similar scenario can play out at Textswap.com. Such a scenario involves not being able to find as great a variety of matches, or books in like new condition because of waiting just before the start of the semester to list your books. At that point you are competing with other procrastinators and in addition to the mentioned disadvantages it may cost you more to have to pay for rush shipment, you are more anxious and stressed out about finding the best matches, and the list goes on.

So even though Text4swap.com is your best bet to save hundreds of dollars, whether you list your books early or late, your best and least stressful bet is to list your books on Text4swap.com early, early, early, every semester!

Swappers' Reputation

To protect our members and to promote fair and fast swapping Text4swap.com utilizes a 5-Star ratings system. Hence, each Swapper is able to rate their overall swapping experience for all transactions by rating other Swappers from 1-Star for a ridiculously awful experience, to 5-Stars for an extremely awesome experience. Thus, Swappers are able to get an idea of how reliable each swapper is by reviewing his/her ratings. Therefore, it is very important to give a reasonable and 'fair' rating to all the users that you exchange your books with. Also, do not only rate swappers when they mess up. Take the time to leave positive feedbacks as like warning Swappers to be aware of a particular Swapper, it is equally important to let them know of a Swapper that they most likely can depend on.