Ordinary Gweilo

recent posts

about

Bargain Books

Sometimes the price of books in Hong Kong is almost beyond belief:

Jamie’s Ministry of Food

Page One, Kowloon Tong HK$474
Cover Price £25.00 HK$292
Amazon.co.uk* (shipped to Hong Kong) £17.97 HK$210
Typical UK bookstore price £12.50 HK$146

£1 = HK$11.68 

* Amazon price is £9.99, plus a delivery charge of £7.98 (£4.99 per shipment plus £2.99 per item)

So the price in Page One is more than three times the price you would typically pay in a UK bookstore, and 60% higher than the cover price. 

Of course, if you purchase multiple items from Amazon, you could split the shipment charge across all of them, making the books even cheaper.

My last delivery from Amazon took 6 days.  

Posted in ,

2 responses to “Bargain Books”

  1. Richard avatar
    Richard

    The comparison is even better for things which attract VAT – e.g. BBC DVDs. Since we don’t pay VAT for shipping outside the EU, it’s possible to get the price to be about the same for shipped-to-UK and shipped-to-HK. The collapse in the value of the GBP doesn’t hurt too much either…

    Like

    Reply
  2. F avatar
    F

    go to http://www.rainbowboat.com
    email them the amazon ISBN number and details They will quote in HK$: generally the same price as on Amazon or a bit cheaper. Arrives in HK in 1 week, with no delivery / shipping fees.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to F Cancel reply