NoQ Store review

I'm an avid fan of books and I've been buying all my books from online stores or secondhand bookstores since a few years back. Brick and mortar book stores are just too insanely expensive and online stores are a good alternative, where prices can be as much as half of that in physical book stores.

For online stores, bookdepository has been my go-to site because of the ease of the use of the site and the attractive prices.

But last month, I was contacted by NoQ Store to give their online book store a try and I thought 'why not?' after discovering that the prices they offered are very competitive as well.

For the purpose of this review, I will be mostly comparing between NoQ Store and bookdepository.

Founded in 2011 as the online bookstore of Times Publishing Group, NoQ Store offers a convenient and hassle-free experience in the purchase of books and other related items, without the hassle of lining up and queueing, hence the name "NoQ".

You can easily search for the books you want by entering a title, author, ISBN or publisher. The search function is very straightforward and easy to use, works in the same way as bookdepository.

I decided to cart out "The Fault In Our Stars" almost immediately because it's one of the books that I've read recently and I loved it. It's a brilliant book and outshines "Looking for Alaska", even though I loved that too. It's so good that I decided it wasn't enough having it sit in my Kindle, I want it on my bookshelve too.

What I like about the user interface is that when I've added the book into my cart, it brings up a list of suggested reads and books that others have bought that are relevant to me and really of my taste.

 NoQ Store also offers free shipping for orders above $25. If you're only buying one book, bookdepository may be a better choice as they have free shipping regardless of amount, but if the price on NoQ Store is cheaper and you're planning to purchase more, then I'll say go for NoQ Store. What I do is I'll normally check out the prices on all the different online book stores and buy from the cheapest.

In terms of delivery, NoQ Store is faster than bookdepository. Although bookdepository states the mailing time to be of approximately 10 working days, it normally takes me about 4 weeks to get the book. My books ordered from NoQ Store on 25 May were shipped out on 8 June and I received it on 13 June today. I should have received it earlier this week (about 3 to 4 days earlier) but Ta-Q-Bin had some screw-ups and it was only delivered today, but on the whole, the whole shopping and shipping duration took about 2 and a half weeks. Good for the times when you need those books more urgently.

My books came in a box well-protected with newspapers and wrapping papers to prevent the books from "bouncing" in the box. So no complaints there.

If you love physical books like me, do give NoQ Store a try the next time you have a book in mind. :)

For readers of smellypompom, you can get a 

15% discount 

on all purchases at NoQ Store when you use the code 

SMELLYPOM

 at check out. 

Offer ends 31 August 2014!