You know what's sad?

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megaman1x

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I need to buy a Stethoscope and I checked out the campus healthcare bookstore. The Littman Cardiology III is what I want and they are selling it for $220 + tax on top of that. (I'm in Canada)

Then I go online and find some US websites listing it for $127.00 US. Factoring in shipping costs and currency exchange (the Canadian dollar is doing quite well), I still save $100!!!!

How silly is that. My own bookstore....tisk tisk tisk....lol

I'll have to let my future classmates know.

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megaman1x said:
I need to buy a Stethoscope and I checked out the campus healthcare bookstore. The Littman Cardiology III is what I want and they are selling it for $220 + tax on top of that. (I'm in Canada)

Then I go online and find some US websites listing it for $127.00 US. Factoring in shipping costs and currency exchange (the Canadian dollar is doing quite well), I still save $100!!!!

How silly is that. My own bookstore....tisk tisk tisk....lol

I'll have to let my future classmates know.

That's bookstores for ya. The real sad part is all the people who will end up buying from them anyway.
 
I'm used to getting reamed by my school bookstore. What pissed me off was my friends at schools that actually got educational discounts on things (like 10$ copies of MS Office).
 
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megaman1x said:
I need to buy a Stethoscope and I checked out the campus healthcare bookstore. The Littman Cardiology III is what I want and they are selling it for $220 + tax on top of that. (I'm in Canada)

Then I go online and find some US websites listing it for $127.00 US. Factoring in shipping costs and currency exchange (the Canadian dollar is doing quite well), I still save $100!!!!

How silly is that. My own bookstore....tisk tisk tisk....lol

I'll have to let my future classmates know.

If you are at a Canadian Med School your school will have an equipment sale in Sept/Oct where you get the Littman Cardio III for ~$120. And you get like 18,000 Shoppers Drug Mart Optimum points! (because it's Shoppers Health Care that sells them).
 
megaman1x said:
I need to buy a Stethoscope and I checked out the campus healthcare bookstore. The Littman Cardiology III is what I want and they are selling it for $220 + tax on top of that. (I'm in Canada)

Then I go online and find some US websites listing it for $127.00 US. Factoring in shipping costs and currency exchange (the Canadian dollar is doing quite well), I still save $100!!!!

How silly is that. My own bookstore....tisk tisk tisk....lol

I'll have to let my future classmates know.

i learned early on in undergrad that campus bookstores are almost always ripoffs. Most of what they sell (textbooks and school supplies) you can get online for at least half off.
 
SMRT said:
If you are at a Canadian Med School your school will have an equipment sale in Sept/Oct where you get the Littman Cardio III for ~$120. And you get like 18,000 Shoppers Drug Mart Optimum points! (because it's Shoppers Health Care that sells them).

I don't think thats true at all Canadian Med Schools. Last year my friend had to buy one and he paid regular price. There was no sale at all.

There is also no Shoppers Health Care in this city either.

Thanks though
 
Undergrad in the US I have saved approx. 900 dollars on books so far just by ordering off of amazon used and other sites.
 
Cozmosis said:
I'm used to getting reamed by my school bookstore. What pissed me off was my friends at schools that actually got educational discounts on things (like 10$ copies of MS Office).

If you know people who are getting MS Office for $10, they are getting counterfeit software. MS Office Student/Teacher is about $100 WITH the discount. Office Pro with the educational discount is somewhere between 200 and 300.

Ed
 
edmadison said:
If you know people who are getting MS Office for $10, they are getting counterfeit software. MS Office Student/Teacher is about $100 WITH the discount. Office Pro with the educational discount is somewhere between 200 and 300.

Ed

At my undergrad all the MS software was like $10-$15 each. At med school we can get it all for like $50. I was told at each place that the majority of the cost is funded by your tuition or technology fee. I think they bank on a certain percentage of students not wanting it...
 
megaman1x said:
I don't think thats true at all Canadian Med Schools. Last year my friend had to buy one and he paid regular price. There was no sale at all.

There is also no Shoppers Health Care in this city either.

Thanks though

There's a city in Canada without a Shoppers Drug Mart???? :)
 
Most campus bookstores in Canada (and, I imagine, elsewhere) are owned by big chains, even if they're not branded as such. Their prices are high because they deal in low volumes of highly specialized products, with little or no competition. The only advantage of buying at a campus store is convenience.

Students from NB and PEI (and maybe other 'have-not' provinces) get free Littman Cardio IIIs in MS1, and later on also free PDAs and gift certificates.
 
Bookstores are never going to be the cheapest for both good and bad reasons. The good reasons are that they're generally small businesses and don't have the volume discounts of big retailers. The bad reason is that they have to know they have a pretty solid monopoly business. This is less true in the internet age, but I know I'm sometimes lazy enough that I just buy everything at the book store. :)

University of Texas actually had a co-op bookstore that was theoretically student owned and managed. It sounds cool, but the prices still sucked. Also, they never stocked enough used books, which one would expect from a co-op.
 
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