viscomm team 20
history of Sim LIM Square
Sim Lim Square opened in 1987.
It is a shopping centre dedicated to IT and electronic goods.
Don't buy things from there!
But over the years, the reputation of Sim Lim Square began going down.
Don't go to Sim Lim! Later kena cheated!
Some stores were busted for selling counterfeit goods while others were caught charging extra amounts to customers’ credit cards.
In 2013, Sim Lim Square’s management put up lists of shops that shoppers have to be wary of.
The stores resorted to shrinking or removing their name from their signboards while some even changed their names. Others went around removing these lists.
However, there were still many scam cases after that, notably the cases involving Mobile Air's owner, Jover Chew.
On 28 September 2014, a Chinese citizen, Miss Zhou, got a $1010 refund from Jover Chew after he made her pay for a two year insurance she didn’t want to buy.
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The refund was all in coins and it weighed about 18kg.
He made Miss Zhou and her aunt pick up the coins from the floor and count them as he videoed them and laughed at them.
On 3 November 2014, Mr Pham Van Thoai, a Vietnamese tourist bought an iPhone 6 from Mobile Air but the staff refused to let him leave with the phone unless he paid an additional $1500 in warranty fees.
A video of Mr Pham begging on his knees and crying was circulated online and photos of him sobbing were published. This sparked nationwide outrage and sympathy for him.
Mobile Air was eventually closed and Jover Chew was sentence 33 months in prison for cheating 26 victims out of $16,599 over 10 months.
The impact of the scams was so serious that the Sim Lim Square management appealed to the authorities to “take a tough stand against recalcitrant retailers”.
Since then, more steps have been taken to clamp down on errant retailers and to ensure fairer trade practices. This include the STARetailer initiative where the management will offer a star to retailers with honest and satisfactory services as well as CASE backing some of the stores and their reliability.
Business has begun to pick up again after the Jover Chew cases and the mall’s reputation is beginning to IMPROVE again.
