Ottakers...now open. (Ottakars)

Member Name: mreyre

Product:	Ottakars
Date:	29/10/00 (193 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: 10% off for school orders - useful.

Disadvantages: Young staff, particularly on a Saturday, I reckon this is how they keep costs down.

This branch of popular book store has sprung up in many towns and cities within the last two or three years. The first one I knew about was in my wife's home town of Sutton Coldfield. The town centre recently went through a re-fit and Ottakers was one of the stores which suddenly sprung up.

I went in to have a perusal and found that many of the "new" books had special offer stickers on, with between £1 and £5 off the publishers price. These days, on-line bookstores like Amazon also offer these sorts of reductions, but if you are in town to buy other things, you might as well save waiting in for the postman and buy it yourself!

I now shop in my local Ottakers' store in King's Lynn. Again, this store opened about 2 years ago and has since gone from strength to strength. It is a bit strange, as WH Smith is immediately opposite, and Ottakers beats or matches every price of their books (usually). They also offer a much better children's section, with a "Buy 3 books get a 4th free" stand, which you can collect special stamps on each visit to trade in for the free book at a later visit, should you wish to.

As a teacher, I frequently look for "teacher resource" books, and again, Ottakers has a much greater selection than Smiths. They also operate a book reservation service. Also, if nearby schools wish to open an account, you can get 10% off your order if you order books via the school, which is very useful for schools as they can get more books with their money!!

The staff are always very helpful, though often a little "young" for my liking, I'm sure they wouldn't be able to help me on all areas of literary knowledge, more point me in the direction of WHSmiths, probably.

Summary: