Student Cries and Begs for Refund After Being Scammed at Sim Lim Square

Shops at Sim Lim Square have recently made more than one customer cry.

A 19-year-old undergraduate was reduced to tears at Mobile 22, after being told she had to pay S$1,000 on top of the S$999 she had paid for an iPhone 6.

This comes after a Vietnamese tourist cried and knelt down to beg the staff of another shop, Mobile Air, for a refund after he was told to pay an additional S$1,500 as warranty fees for an iPhone 6.

The international student, who did not want her name or school to be revealed, said that she went to the shop located on the first floor of Sim Lim Square on 9 Oct  after checking many other shops round the island. She agreed to pay S$999 for the phone.

The salesman told her that the warranty would cost S$39.90, an amount she found reasonable. But she got a shock when she was charged S$1,000 on her debit card for warranty fees alone.

“There was an ‘x’ between the S$39.90 and 24 months that the seller had very strategically covered with his finger while urging me to sign the document,” she said in an email to The Straits Times.

“I’m a middle class student from India, I barely had money to buy the phone let alone pay for this,” she said.

When the staff said they would not return her the money, she started begging them and burst into tears as the money was meant for her school tuition fees. They ignored her and even yelled at her, she said. Eventually, they charged her S$551 instead of S$1,000.

The incident has left the student broke, and she is surviving on meals that cost between $3 and $4, she said, adding that she did not know of any way she could seek redress.

“That day still haunts me. It was my worst experience in this country for I was told that Singapore was a safe city and incidents like these don’t occur,” she said.