Whenever a new semester starts, one of the most crowded places is our campus bookstore. As before, plenty of students visited the bookstore. Paying with cash or card, one common sentence students hear is, “Refunding is impossible.” This is ironic as ‘Receipt is required for a refund’ is written on the actual receipt. Yoo Han-bin(’14, Dept. of Civil Engineering), was frustrated once when he found out his professor introduced a different textbook from what was described in the syllabus. “Because most students buy their books according to their professors’ syllabi in advance, students who bought wrong textbooks have no choice but to face an awkward situation.” He insisted that an exchange or refund should be available. Kim Min-sung(’15, Dept. of French Language and Literature), said “Unacceptable. Buying textbooks is pretty much hard without the campus bookstore,” and pointed out the irrationality. Like them, many other students also had complaints about non-refundability.

Is it really non-refundable?

  As a matter of fact, it is refundable. Store manager Lee Dae-hui, claimed he never once refused a refund. He added that our campus bookstore belongs to CBNU’s Consumer Cooperative, and it runs for students and faculties’ welfare improvements, we always think of students’ needs as a first priority. Then why they are saying refunding is impossible? Here are the bookstore’s explanations for this. First, the stock is limited. Currently, our campus bookstore sets stocks based on the last year’s sales volume. Our bookstore is a nonprofit organization, and due to the revision of textbooks that are being published almost every year, stocks can’t be equal to the number of every single college’s students. Secondly, students who want a refund don’t come back right away. “When students realize they bought the wrong textbooks, most of them do not refund it immediately but about after a week,” store manager Lee Dae-hui said and made his difficult position clear as a textbook supplier. If a book is already sold out, students who actually need textbooks cannot buy it until it is refunded and, due to this, an additional textbook order is made, so that causes the deficit, either because it won’t be sold eventually or because refunded stocks are occurring when there is no demand for those anymore. For these reasons, saying refunding is impossible means asking students to be cautious about buying textbooks because students who really need textbooks couldn’t get those at the right time. For those mistakes, guidelines for purchasing books, such as ‘Double-check what you need to buy after the very first class of your instructor’ were posted on the outer wall, and moreover, the exact same guidelines were stated on purchase request sheet. In spite of both preventive measures, there are still students with mistakes, and there are even students requesting refunds without their receipt or credit card they purchased the books with, causing business congestion time after time. Additionally, team leader Lee Dae-hui said, “We’re saying we can’t take it back, but the truth is we can’t refuse it because we consider the students’ needs best,” and he notified us once more that it is refundable.

How애do we deal with it?

  Even though it is refundable, intimidating students at first could cause misunderstandings, and it’s definitely wrong. Considering the bookstore’s position, however, it is not hard to find out that it is for students’ benefit after all. In this dilemma, our students are disoriented when they blame the syllabi for containing wrong information or bookstores for invoking no refundability. Students should be more cautious before they buy textbooks of course, but to prevent those repeated mistakes, more detailed information or education about buying textbooks through pre-university programs or each college’s orientations seem to be required.
 

By Min Tae-kwan
tk36@cbnu.ac.kr