Sim Lim Square Scams in Singapore

Following the earlier complaint by our reader regarding the Sim Lim Square scam on purchasing of Samsung Galaxy Tab, there is a complaint lodged to Stomp regarding the exact same shop. However, the complaint is regarding Nokia phone this time.

From Stomp:

STOMPer einnor warns others against this shop in Sim Lim that charged her friend for 'software installation' without her friend's knowledge. When confronted, the shop owner smugly asked the friend to get a lawyer to sue him.

The STOMPer elaborates:

"Recently, my classmate from China bought 2 Nokia 302 phones from a shop in Sim Lim for 560 SGD.

"The shop told my friend that the phones require a software to work when my friend brings them back to China.

"The owner didn't tell my friend how much the 'software installation' was, so my friend thought that it was free as she is using the phones in China, and so she agreed to the installation.

"In the end, the bill came up to $1410.

"This is obviously a cheating case. And when my friend asked for a refund, the owner said no and proudly asked my friend to find a lawyer and sue him.

"STOMPers, be careful of this shop."

Following this news broadcast by Stomp, Facebook user Doris Winata shared it: "They charged my sis $850 for itouch which cost $450. @_@".

"Yea.. They return 100$ and gave a screen protector. My sis gullible ma"

She cannot confirm that it is the same shop but the shop is definitely in Sim Lim Square.

Victims who have been cheated by any shop should report to the police and CASE so that the scammers will not be able to victimize more people. It is time to uphold the reputation of Sim Lim Square, which is one of the IT heavens in Singapore.

Sim Lim Square Scam - IT Products

Sim Lim Square is an IT heaven for most people in Singapore, which sells cheap IT products. Unlike Funnan Centre, shops at Sim Lim Square may even give you discounts on the spot.

However, there are quite a number of scam complaints about shops in Sim Lim Square. Although we believe most of the shops are running honest business, we cannot rule out that there are black sheep among them.

Below is a complaint about a shop we have received today. The email is unedited except for the unit number of the shop.

Hello there,

I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 plus at Sim Lim Square. I knew that the shops there can have very differing prices, so I went around to find one with the lowest price. I found it at #02-77. I made sure I was careful before I made the decision to buy, because I knew that there has been many scam cases that happened there, so I asked if the price they quoted includes everything, warranty, all accessories in the package and tax. Well everything was ok at first, but after i paid for it, the salesperson brought the phone to the counter at the back to do setups. He then told me that i needed to buy a memory card to increase the speed of the processor. I knew the phone came with 16GB of internal memory, but he said no, the programming and all will be under the external memory. After i bought the memory card and the guy did whatever programming that he claimed to do, he told me the total for the setups and programming will be 300 SGD (I can't rmb the exact amt that he quoted) on top of the 640 SGD that i have already paid for the phone itself. I was really angry cause he didn't tell me that he was going to do all those programming and that I'll have to pay some more. He also claimed that I wouldn't be able to access the internet if he did not do the setups for me. I refused to pay that extra 300 bucks and in the end haggled it down to 200. When I went home and was trying out the phone functions, I came across the storage space section and realised that the memory space on the external memory card is not used up at all! So basically, I paid 200 bucks for nothing, aside from the memory card that was totally not needed!

Then again, of course I knew that it was my fault that I wanted to find cheap deals, but it's just so dumb that i was made to pay that extra 200 bucks for nothing! And the salesperson lied that the phone will not work if he did not programme it for me.
I just want to warn people so they don't get scammed like I did.

Thanks!

We would advise everyone to go to only shops that are recommended by friends.