OpenTrolley Bookstore

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but if you're ever looking for books in Singapore, there's this online bookstore called The OpenTrolley Bookstore.

It allegedly offers the cheapest prices in Singapore and provides quite a wide variety of books - in fact, more than perhaps any physical bookstore like Borders. It's kinda like Amazon but without the ridiculous shipping costs. In fact, delivery charges are so low, they are quite insignificant if you order many copies.

I've tried their service once, and it's pretty cool because I can easily find whether a book is available instead of having to go down to Borders or Kinokuniya. The prices are also reasonable (but I'm not sure if they're the cheapest, since I'm too lazy to hop down to those bookstore and compare). I did get a hitch in my order though: the delivery address was misprinted and I had to arrange with SingPost to get it redelivered, thus delaying the package by a few days, but thankfully OpenTrolley's service was prompt and fuss-free.

And since the ordering is conducted online, it takes very little effort to hunt down some reviews of the book to see how it rates. In fact, I used Amazon's reviews to check the book before placing the order with OpenTrolley... Unfortunately but understandably enough, there is no "browsing" of the physical book itself, which is not all that important, but sometimes little things like contents and accompanying notes (primarily for non-fiction) as well as paper texture and smell may matter. A bigger problem is that, for some ironic reason, they do not have Singapore published books.

Oh, by the way, if you make a transaction before the end of the year, you can get a 10% discount if you use DBS cards to pay for the books.