Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Book Depository

The Book Depository (TBP), now an Amazon subsidiary, claims to offer free worldwide delivery. It is stated on the company’s website FAQ:
Delivery is FREE on all orders. This applies irrespective of your location as long as we ship to your country.

Of course, the delivery costs are actually already embedded in the price. To illustrate, I recently purchased these six totally non-academic books from TBP:

It is known that the price quoted depends on your IP address, which tells your geographical location. On my PC at home with our UniFi connection the books cost £81.30. However, Afi still has access to her UK university network via VPN. On her PC, the same books cost only £69.41. Try guessing which price I paid. Translated into our local currency the difference is almost RM60! Was I cheating? I don’t think so; I was just taking the company for its words.

By the way, Amazon UK, which offers free UK deliveries, sells the same books for £67.34 for delivery within the UK and £90.77 for delivery to Malaysia. So it is still cheaper buying from TBP. I didn’t check how much the books will cost from Amazon USA.

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