Trust but verify!  We do it every day.  Our ownership/management has been verifying the status of our academic customers for almost three decades.  In fact, we were a founding pioneer in developing verification standards that still stand today.

Selling software and hardware products to students and faculty for over a decade, ThinkEDU is a leader in the academic retail space. Knowing our customers now place more importance on user privacy and data protection led the company to reevaluate the practices of their third-party vendors.  Our biggest challenge was to make sure we don’t request sensitive data like birth dates and social security number information during the verification process. Doing so would raise concerns of potential data and privacy risks.

Beginning in 2021, we partnered with Proxi.id.  Switching to Proxi.id increased order completion rates, improved user satisfaction, and reduced data compliance risks.  With our current Verification System, users can verify their academic status without providing personally identifiable information. Proxi.id’s academic verification service leverages the latest single sign-on (SSO) technologies for academic end user verification, enabling users to verify by signing-in to their own college or university portal using their institutional credentials. No personal or sensitive information is collected or shared as part of the process and there’s no requirement to create an account with Proxi.id.

Once students or educators place items in their shopping cart and check out, if any items require proof of their academic status, a pop-up window will come up asking them for their school/college log-in credentials.  They are then sent to their college’s SSO sign on.  If successful, the order comments is marked as successful and the student or educator can proceed with their order.  As a result, we have a modern, compliance-focused verification service that provides a private and secure experience for ThinkEDU’s customer base of students, teachers, and faculty.

We also have our in-house customer service department work orders to obtain academic verification that can’t be passed thru the automated process described above.  We will contact the customer directly requesting academic verification. If an order that requires academic verification (pretty much all of the software we offer does), does not provide verification from the customer after multiple requests, we will cancel the order.

We take the academic verification process very seriously, as we know our vendors reply on us to make sure only qualified students and educators can purchase their academically priced software. We can provide you or any of our vendors customer verification for your products sold if requested.

• ThinkEDU Manages and operates over 1,000 online academic e-Stores.
• 95% of the SKU’s we sell are downloads of the most popular software (e.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Cloud, Rosetta Stone, etc.).
• Software prices are deeply discounted to qualified students or faculty/staff members.
• ThinkEDU verifies the academic status of any online customer to make sure they are qualified before fulfilling the product.
• ThinkEDU is responsible for all customer service including installation support of any software we fulfill. Other responsibilities include: logistics, fulfillment, and academic verification.
• 24/7 online support via https://thinkedu.com/support (ThinkEDU) 8:00-7:00 PM CT Phone Support (M-F)
• ThinkEDU is responsible for all customer service including installation support. Other responsibilities include: Store merchandising, logistics, fulfillment, and academic verification.