Buying Textbooks on Amazon.com
I am a Doctor of Physical Therapy student and I just had to purchase the required textbooks for first-year students. Ouch. Apparently, I was spoiled during my time as an undergraduate.
At the university where I completed my B.S. degree, we borrowed our textbooks for free. At the beginning of the semester, undergraduate and graduate students went to a part of the library where textbooks were stored. We picked up our required textbooks, checked them out the same way we checked out library books, used them for the semester, and returned them at the end of the semester. Of course, there are some books professors recommend buying those as time and money allowed.
I heard my classmates grumbling about spending $880 USD we had to pay for the 12 required textbooks through the university bookstore. I planned to use Amazon.com to save money. My total on Amazon came to $742 and I received free shipping using an Amazon Prime account. Although I saved almost $140 buying textbooks on Amazon.com instead of from the university bookstore, I was still concerned about how I was going to pay for these books before my fall financial aid and student loans are distributed.
At checkout, I received an offer to apply for a Amazon.com Store Card from GE Money Bank with six months interest free. This would allow me to put my textbook total on the Amazon.com Store Card and pay off my balance when I received the excess of my financial aid and student loans, which usually come one week after the semester starts.
This offer did not come without risk: If there is ANY balance on the Amazon.com Store Card at month six, six months of interest will be charged to the account on the interest-free balance of my textbooks $742 and the interest rate is very high at 25.99%.
As I plan to only use the Amazon.com Store Card to purchase my DPT textbooks and pay the balance when my excess financial aid and student loans are reimbursed, I decided to take the risk and put my textbook total on the Amazon.com Store Card.
Filed under Physical Therapy | Tags: amazon, amazon prime, amazon.com, amazon.com store card, book, books, bookstore, buy, buy textbooks, card, college, credit, credit card, doctor of physical therapy, dpt, fafsa, financial aid, prime, store, student, student loans, text, textbook, textbooks, university | Comment (0)FREE Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA)
I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, but today, I feel very foolish.
Today, I filled out the free FAFSA application at www.fafsa.ed.gov to apply for federal student aid so that I can take some classes this summer.
But first, I paid $79.99 for a third-party service to file my free federal student aid application for me.
I typed “FAFSA” into Google and clicked on FAFSA.com, the top result and a Sponsored Link.
I completed the form and was surprised when my credit card number was required to submit my application. I had to pay $79.99 to apply for student loans? I thought it was strange, but I haven’t applied for student loans in almost 10 years. In the end, I decided it must be legit. I put in my credit card number and hit submit.
That’s when I knew I had just paid $79.99 to Student Financial Aid Services Inc. to file my FAFSA form for me. I was using a third-party service NOT affiliated with the Department of Education.
I blame no one but myself. FAFSA stands for FREE Application for Federal Student Aid. I paid to file an application with FREE right in the name! The statement “We are not affiliated with the Dept. of Education” on the fake FAFSA site actually links to the REAL FAFSA site: www.fafsa.ed.gov.
Please don’t be a fool like me and pay to fill out your FAFSA.
Beware this fake FAFSA site.
