Recently, I heard about this website called BookXcess from someone on Bookstagram. BookXcess is a Malaysia bookstore that sells remaindered books – meaning that while you can’t find the latest releases there, you can find a lot of older titles at great prices. Obviously, I can’t pass up a good book bargain so I made a pretty huge haul. Here is my experience (video first and you can scroll down if you’d rather just read about it!)

Purchasing

For my first haul, I bought 17 books, ranging from children’s books to nonfiction, and paid a total of SGD$128.02. The breakdown was: SGD$99.30 for the books (I supposedly “saved” SGD$249.97, but actually I just spent SGD$128.02 as opposed to not buying books at all), SGD$16 for shipping (flat rate shipping to Singapore) and the rest was GST.

The children’s books were much cheaper than the rest (I got a colouring book for about SGD$2 or $3?) but on average, I paid between $5 to $6 per book. Cookbooks cost me about $10, which is a lot cheaper than what you’d get in a bookstore.

The average price of a book remained the same for subsequent hauls, although they do drop during sale periods (e.g. public holidays, 9/9 or 10/10 sales).

Delivery

I heard on Bookstagram that someone got their books in a week, and they have a 48-hour delivery guarantee to the Klang Valley area, but it took me about 2 weeks to get the books delivered to Singapore (which is in line with their 7 to 14 business days estimate). I ordered the books on June 4, they were shipped June 14, and I received them on June 17. For me, this is faster than Book Depository, which normally takes about 2 to 3 weeks to reach me.

After I made my first purchase, I made a few more purchases and had them sent to my place in Malaysia. The delivery times for these were much faster – for one purchase, I ordered on 26th June, the books were shipped on 30th June, and they were delivered 1st July – less than a week!

Customer Support

Since I bought quite a lot of books, I’m supposed to qualify for their membership program, which would let me get discounts on future purchases. But contrary to their FAQ, I didn’t actually get a membership number automatically. I reached out to BookXcess through their email support ticket and Facebook, and so far they’ve only responded on Facebook. The Facebook support was helpful and sent me the link to their membership signup form, but it took another week to actually get my membership details. Looking at the timeline, I first reached out on June 11th but only got my membership details on June 26th (coincidentally, after I made a second purchase but it’s okay, I’ll have more opportunities to buy books in the future!)

By the way, this membership issue seems to be a Singapore-thing. After I made my first deliver-to-Malaysia order, I received a membership application the next day.

If you just want to get your books and won’t need support, this shouldn’t be an issue but if you need to talk to them, I’d recommend going through Facebook.

Quality of Books Received

The BookXcess website mentioned that some of the books might have a remainder mark, but all the books I received arrived in fantastic condition and I haven’t seen any obvious marks. In fact, some of them came wrapped in plastic!

I’ve only received one book where the cover was damaged, but generally I think you’re going to be getting a really high quality of books right now.

Overall Thoughts

I’m not going to lie, I’m a little bit obsessed with BooksXcess (for more proof, you can look at this post). Their books are really cheap* and the flat rate shipping is worth it given the number of books that I buy. The libraries have opened, but in the meantime, I got three book hauls! I am literally drowning in books right now!

The books in their glory:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Eustacia (@eusteacia)

*For instance, a book on my wishlist that was listed for about SGD$15 on Book Depository was going for about $5 on BookXcess!