University of Toronto Bookstore

The go to place for some UofT merchandise. The place has expanded its merch lineups since many years ago. Now have collaboration with OVO, underamor, and roots. Can also pickup a teddy bear that says someone from UofT loves me <3

The building is beautiful. It used to be the Toronto Central Library (the original Toronto Reference Library, which also had children's room and circulating section). I have to admit that I usually visit the lower level, so my review is mostly about it. The store is very spacious, and has a good variety of products (clothing, dorm essentials, bags, stationery, textbooks, some digital equipment and software, and of course souvenirs/gifts with the university logo). The products are not cheap. Even though all clothing is made overseas (developing countries with cheap labor) and fabric are not the highest quality, the prices can be quite steep. I guess if you wanna show off that you attending the school, you need to pay for it, even though you already forked out a fortune on tuition. sigh. My biggest complaint is the customer service. whoever manages the store, they are doing a terrible job in training/motivating people. I visited on a weekday, early afternoon (but past the lunch hours) and there was literally ONE employee in the entire place, manning a cash register (all the other cash registers were closed). He was keeping cool (honestly, if I were him I would have a meltdown), with a lineup and people asking convoluted questions - and he was all on his own. it's either everyone else quit on that very day, or they just didn't notice that the lunch was over. anyways, it's been more or less my experience during previous visits as well. or there would be a few cashiers, but for whatever reason, only one person was able to process my transaction. I mean some people are nice, but overall it's like nobody really gives a toss. some products get messy - and mixed up. the clothing displays can definitely use some TLC. as for my last visit, after seeing the lonely cashier and the line up I just put the merch back and walked away. my bad: I forgot to mention: there was another employee in the store, but she was on the Canada Post counter, so I don't think she would be able to cash me out.

The staff it seems have a hard time not looking at me like my face is disintegrating. Though I did meet one helpful staff member, I noticed most seemed like they'd rather I just leave. Though this arrogance I suppose is to be expected.

I enjoyed my time at the Bookstore! The staff are friendly and very helpful - particularly Katya who showed me around the Trade Books section on the top floor!! Customer service folks are willing to help you out, and store has a good selection of items. They have sales for the holidays so take some time out to visit the Bookstore yourself and you’ll find some good deals :)

A one stop solution to student requirements at UofT. You can get pretty much get anything from a pencil, notebook to a UofT merch. Prices are mid range. And a must place to visit as a UofT student, faculty etc. They have refund or exchange policies for most of the clothing apparel’s.

This is a charming bookstore not just for campus and student/grads but for the general public as well. Really great selection of books and gifts!

Quite expensive but have some discount recently. All kinds of things could be found there, even cuuuuuute Jellycat! Support credit card, debit card, student card, and alipay/wechat oay.

A Vast collection of books and souvenirs. I was searching for fridge magnet and couldn't get one. The pull over that I bought is of good quality. The cost was slightly on the higher end.

Would give 0 stars if I could. Customer service is an absolute joke. I ordered a $300 frame, and received someone else's order and a $150 frame. So someone else received my expensive frame as well as a packing slip with all my personal info (name, address, email, phone number). I tried calling the bookstore multiple times but no one ever answers the phone. I then emailed them and they said they would send me the correct frame on August 6. It is now August 17 and I haven't received it or any email to notify me that it has been shipped. I tried calling but as per usual they do not answer the phone. Avoid!!

What can one really say about a university bookstore? Textbooks are expensive, students need them, students have no money-- it's never going to be a truly happy relationship, is it? A relationship of convenience, or of blackmail, maybe. Oh, I jest. After spending a lot more time in this store (you might say, getting to know the forced-upon friend), I started to appreciate its finer points, like the absolutely stunning upstairs area known as "Great Hall" (filled with hundreds on non-text books!), which boasts very high, ornate ceilings, and equally-high windows that let in some glorious light at the right time of day. The staff (largely students) are mostly very friendly and laid-back and the general atmosphere is unusually lovely for browsing shelves of fiction. It used to be the library, you know. The sale tables sometimes have such good findings, it's ridiculous, and you can buy pants that advertise your bum and your school at the same time! (I have at least 2 pairs myself, so I say this with great respect).

Horrible service. If the machine isn't working, they wait (literally) half an hour for it to print the receipt and make the customer search up if the payment was received or not. Make sure you get the right cashier or you're screwed. Will never come back.

To start, this is a positive review. I know it might be surprising but hear me out. Textbooks are expensive and that's not the bookstore's fault. Unless you prefer new physical books like I do, this probably isn't the store for you. That being said, if you are up for buying a new textbook or have to buy a new textbook, then the U of T bookstore has its advantages. For anything else, there are used book stores, online textbook listings, and pirating. Not many people know this but the store offers price match plus an additional 10% price difference. More specifically, I can price match any book to the price online on Amazon if it's cheaper plus an additional ten percent difference. This essentially means I can buy any textbook I need for 10% cheaper than Amazon price and I don't have to wait for delivery. Besides selling just books, they also have a few services that are advantageous. The store offers custom t-shirts printing for relatively cheap. That's great for any clubs or student associations when you want to order custom clothing in small quantities. The store also offers on demand printing for any books they hold licenses to print that they've run out of inventory on. Second floor has electronics with Apple products, tablets, earphones and stuff like that but more importantly you can buy emergency chargers and wires and adapters there. If you wait for the middle of school year or Summer, you can get a lot of school-wear for sale prices. I got a standard U of T hoodie for like $13 during the year that was good quality. They were selling cuffed sweatpants for under $20 at one point during the Summer too. However, the normal prices are expensive in my opinion. But if you're going to be studying here for four years anyways, you can be patient enough wait for a sale. They usually happen sometime during the school year. Overall, the store is pretty good for what can be expected. They employ a lot of students and they are quick to offer to help. Stationaries and office supplies are always in stock and you can appreciate buying line paper and notebooks here -- convenient and good quality.

Yes, it's expensive -- but all textbooks are; you'll likely find 'em cheaper on Amazon. I bought my textbooks here for the sake of convenience, but I think I'm just going to buy them on the Kindle/iPad next term -- cheaper, and I won't get scoliosis by the end of the year lugging all those books around campus! With that said, the rest of the bookstore is just okay. The stationery section is rather limited for a campus bookstore, so I'd suggest going elsewhere for your pen and pencil needs. On the other hand, if you do use an iPad, they have a TON of cases -- certainly one of the larger selections of iPad cases I've seen anywhere, including the Apple store. Lines inside the store itself move very quickly, but for some reason the Web pickup line moves as slow as a slug on quaaludes.

The U of T bookstore is the last place I will ever go to buy my textbooks. This place is HUGELY overpriced. Seriously, explore all your other options before buying from here. I highly recommend TUSBE, the engineering book store, amazon, and any other place you can find. I was originally going to buy my books from this place in first year, but my dad found out about the engineering book store and we went there to compare prices. Well, the books are either the same price or cheaper, so you can't go wrong with getting your stuff there instead. However, after buying my first year textbooks, I found out about TUSBE. I wound up returning all of my textbooks to the eng store and bought them off TUSBE instead (for probably 30% of what I would have paid at the UofT bookstore). Honestly, TUSBE students are usually people like you who just want to get rid of their books and don't have a good way to do so. The books are generally barely used/simply read through and will cost less than half of the original. Also, their clothing merchandise is way overpriced and the sizing sucks. Don't have unisex clothing for guys and girls and then not buy any XS sizes. My best suggestion for buying clothing is to wait for their 'secret sales' (not so secret as they are advertised). You can get shirts for $5-$10 and sweats are $17 or so. Hoodies can be cheap during this time too. For stationary, they are generally ok. It's hard to overcharge on a pencil. So in summary, look for TUSBE for textbooks (I have bought and sold all my textbooks on there for the same price so so far I have paid nothing for my textbooks and I'm in third year engineering), wait for their sales for clothing, and stationary is fine to buy there.

Unless you've got loads of cash you'd like to waste (which first year students apparantly love to do), then stay away from this bookstore! Books are WAAYY overpriced and although they have some cool UofT clothing, they too are overpriced as well. $50 for sweats that have the UofT logo embroidered on them? No than.. oh wait crap I bought them (as you can probably guess, I was one of the ones that went crazy in first year and bought all the UofT crap I could) If you're looking to buy books these days, buy them online! You can buy them for at least half the price the bookstore sells it for! The upstairs has a pretty cool computer shop but again is pretty overpriced and you can find better deals along College street. Overall I haven't had great experiences of being ripped off while waiting an hour in line.

I took a continuing education at U of T and had a decent experience at the bookstore. Obviously university bookstores are overpriced, but you're also paying for the convenience -- I was OK with paying a bit more since I was only taking one course, and I could walk in, grab the books, pay for them and leave. I didn't find the books on Amazon and was too lazy to go running around the city looking for them. If you can find your books elsewhere, definitely do it. But if you're lazy or there isn't that much of a price difference, the U of T bookstore isn't awful. I also liked the novelty of having a cute pink U of T clipboard, so maybe I'm just as big of a sucker as the first-years.

Going to this bookstore brings back old memories of university. I still remember first year going with my mom to the bookstore to buy all my textbooks for all my courses for the year. The bags weighed a good 20 lbs. U of T bookstore is a fairly large store. They organize their books by discipline. I was in the sciences, so all my books were on the main first floor. In addition to having every current educational book there, they also have a wide array of U of T merchandise. You know what i'm talking about, UofT sweat shirts, stickers, cups, hoodies, hats, bags, just about every possible thing you can think of. Attached to the Koffler centre, there's also a place you can buy school supplies - pencils, pens, calculators, markers etc. I once had to forfeit some moola to buy a calculator after I forgot mine on the day of an exam.. Yeah, not the smartest thing, but I was glad the bookstore carried them that day, that's for sure. If you don't have the time to go into the bookstore and buy the books yourself, you can order them online and pick them up outside the bookstore, in the koffler centre. Pretty good service for the time-crunched students.

Definitely very expensive, but also pretty convenient. I try to buy everything online, except when there are deals. I also like the new rent-a-textbook options for packages that are in your best interest to buy here (such as textbooks that come with a solution book, or subscriptions to online learning activities). Moral of the story. Only come here for packaged textbook deals. Everything else can be bought on Ebay, and amazon, or any other site for half the price (and instantly for ebooks, it's also environmentally friendly.) -Also they have sales on clothes and electronics usually at the start of each semester. That's the only time I would reccomend buying any UofT gear here.

I have been to the U of T bookstore several times and always walk away with the same impression: chaotic and overpriced. There seems to be no cogent organization in place and the staff are disinterested and unhelpful when dealing with customers. One feels like they are putting the staff out by daring to interrupt one of their (no doubt very important) conversations. My wife is an alum of the University and we have popped in to buy a few items of apparel. It is typically way (and I mean way) overpriced. Example: a sweatshirt for a toddler - $40 plus 13% G.S.T.? Oh no, no, no!!! TIP: They sometimes have sales but I have noticed that what it looks like is they run up a bunch of cheap t shirts and sweatshirts with U of T logos and put them on sale. You never see these "special" items on sale at other times. Occasionally, you can find a true sale item but it is rare. I once found a shirt that was on clearance and the staff would not sell it because the price tag was torn and part of the bar code was missing. Despite the fact that every other piece of the tag was there along with the price, the staff member could not be bothered looking up the code or manually entering the price. One of the most absurd examples of bad customer service I have ever seen! If you want a U of T shirt you are stuck with this place but don't get too excited beforehand, you will be disappointed!

A hidden gem in Toronto, the University of Toronto has many great deals (not counting textbooks) for students and non-students alike. Besides being the official store to get UT apparel gear (manufactured by Roots Canada), the bookstore carries a lot of other apparel, gifts, and novelty items. Besides having a wide selection of Asian treats not commonly found in many larger grocers, the store has a refrigerated section selling drinks and other snacks. Those looking to purchase postage stamps, mail parcels, or send/receive Moneygram wire transfers can do so at the in-house Canada Post post office located at the front. Sign up for their newsletter where you can receive advance notice of major clearance sales, sometimes with the items getting an additional 50% off the marked down price.

One of those times I am upset you can not give 0 stores. A place that is absolutely dedicated to screwing over the students. The text books are unusually expensive (I have ordered identical, brand new books for 1/4 the price from amazon!!) Some of the staff are the rudest and least helpful possible. for e.g. I had a situation that a course text had been changed and I wanted to return a book (1 week old!). The book was not originally in a wrapper and I had not even read it, save flipping through it. The staff would not take it back saying their "manager would not allow it because it has been opened to page 1" . Of course the kid then directed me to the "manager" which turned out to be another student worker since I met the manager minutes later.....long story short kids, you have lots of cheaper options, you want new....use amazon! you want almost new, use tusbe. There are many other ways to be a patron of your university!

So I try to return an electronic item, not realizing that opened items are non-refundable. The cashier says its fine, only I forgot my receipt. So I return the next day with it. The manager then takes my item and says with a really awesome amount of aggression 'We're not a rental service, you can't just buy things to do what you want and then return it when you don't need it anymore." Implying I'm trying to scam them. I honestly was just clueless about it all. I explain this, as well as the fact that it was /her/ employee who told me it was, in fact, refundable. So, you know, if you ever have questions or make a mistake or get conflicting information from the employees, you're definitely going to be made to feel like a thief and/or a scam artist, and you will not get any apologies. I've worked in retail, I understand that there are policies, and I agree with those policies. But you know, I was also trained to not insult even the people you've actually seen steal something! Because that's just shit service! Never going back there again. Neither should you. You can find everything you need somewhere else, for a better price, with better customer service, literally anywhere.

This is relevant for people who choose to weborder used books. Just don't do it! I was shocked to see that the book that I orderd - which is only $20 less than the new book in store - was litered with highlights and scribbles. There is apparently no code of conduct on quality for used books that are sold online.

Specifically in regards to the computer shop. Horrible service and staff that aren't interested in helping out. Also, all sales are final, so if you buy a Mac and want to return it (as you can if you buy through Apple) you're out of luck. Since you can get the educational discount through Apple, there's no reason to bother with the computer shop.

You know how at movie theaters, or in theme parks they overcharge for everything (bottled water is like 3 dollars, etc.) Well, I think that's what the U of T's bookstore is modelling itself on. The prices are grossly inflated. It's frustrating because school is already really expensive, and it feels like the bookstore is taking advantage of the fact that it is slightly more convenient, and especially for students new to the area, more obvious of a place to go to purchase supplies, books etc. It's really too bad that the on campus bookstore couldn't at least provide better quality service, since it has a large staff and (peak times aside - read: September/January) is never really that busy. Everytime (3 times, because I am a fool!) I have gone for help to the computer store/repair shop, I have had bad service, been treated rudely, and the prices/quotes for labour are grossly exaggerated. The customer service rep mocked me for deciding I would go to the Apple store rather than deal with them, but at least there they are trained to smile at you while they bleed you dry... and then... As, I was leaving the store today I overhead another frustrated customer exclaim to the lady at the cell phone shop counter (who at least was sort of nice!) "I have come back here 3 times, maybe I should just call Bell!" - he would rather be on hold to talk to some random representative in a call centre than deal face to face with the U of T bookstore. Way to go U of T, we're the TOPS! Also, buy/sell your books on the Toronto University Student Book Exchange Website or the Discount bookstore, you will get a better deal, no matter what.