RedShelf – Cashback, Rebates & Rewards

I was excited that my college bookstore was offering what was promised to be lifetime ownership of an ebook of a textbook. As someone who uses only ebooks, I was shocked at the lack of transparency of what I was actually getting. 1) You only 'own' the book as long as you maintain an account and provide your personal information to RedShelf. This is not ownership - it is limited, restricted access with conditions. 2) Downloadable only means that you can access the book through the cache of your browser. You cannot change devices without deleting it from one device and redownloading it onto another. This is very inconvenient for those that use multiple devices. 3) You cannot copy and paste into Word or flashcard programs to create notes 4) The reader only offers low quality mechanical style of voices...nothing natural sounding. 5) You cannot use the text with assistive software which is a violation of human rights. The company's response was one of refusing to acknowledge their limitations and outright false claims that I was refunded all of my money. I was only refunded part of my costs.

My ebook worked great for the first part of the semester! Until I started getting an application error that made it so I couldn’t access any part of the book. I reached out to customer service, and was told that my issue would be worked on. It’s been WEEKS. I still don’t have my book. My grades are suffering. I finally broke and asked for a refund, and was told that I didn’t technically buy it from them, so too bad, let us know if you need anything else! I NEED MY BOOK. If your college does inclusive access like mine, it might seem like a great deal. Don’t fall for it. Save yourself the stress and bad grades. Rent or find it on a different platform.

UPDATE: from 2 to 4 stars, as I got a relatively quick response from RedShelf, and they were able to manually opt me out of paying for these free e-books. Thanks Joe! My institution's bookstore began using RedShelf this semester, tacking on $$$ to my tuition bill for materials that are open access (i.e. legally free to download elsewhere), using scare tactics to ensure I didn't feel comfortable opting out, not informing me which materials I was being subscribed to, and not informing my professor until it was too late to opt out. I won't be using any of their materials, but I'm not eligible for a refund as of 6 hours ago, when my professor was only able to inform us that we were being charged for these (again, open access) books 14 hours ago. A perfect example of using university bureaucracy and bloat to profit off students with the least ability to afford it or defend against it.