One of my favorite places to go to buy stuff is Sim Lim Square. Every single day that my parents were here in SG, my dad never failed to stop by Sim Lim. You can find really good deals down there but if you’re not careful, you can get really burned to.
So on their last day here, we made one last stop at SLS because my dad wanted to buy a new camera. During my previous trips with him, I had been looking at prices for the Nintendo DS Lite because I knew they had a Guitar Hero game for it. 
That day he said he would buy me one, so we looked around at the stores and found one that sold the DS Lite for 160 SGD. That’s about as low as it got during my previous surveys and since we didn’t really have that much time, we just went ahead and decided to buy. Of course, I told the salesguy that I’d be getting the GH game as well (I remember in my previous survey, the game amounted to about 75 sgd). He also sold us a few more things like the casing, and a thingamagig that lets you stick an SD card into it so you can play pirated games on the DS (no i’m not proud of that purchase but what the heck.)
This was the receipt that they gave us.
This is the snapshot of the receipt. Notice how the guy conveniently didn’t put the prices on each item. He also separately enumerates items that are part of one package (02 and 03) He even calls out S/W which he downloaded for free off the net.
Total: 475 SGD. I was shocked at the price and proceeded to ask him the break down, while he was conveniently ringing up the sale as my dad had already given him the money. I didn’t think it would end up being that much. So 475 was with 12% GST making the gross price about 424. With the NDS priced at 160 and the thingamagig at 90, I was wondering what magical formula he used to come up with 424. Then I asked him how much the guitar hero was and he told me it was 150 SGD. “WTF”, I had kindly told the sales guy, and he said sort of matter-of-factly, “because you’re buying the game AND the controller”. And then he sells us an adapter for 24 bucks, which I later found was busted.
| NDS |
160 |
| NDS “Bluetooth” + 1GB Micro SD + S/W |
90 |
| NDS AC Adapter |
24 |
| NDS Guitar Hero |
150 |
| |
|
| Total – GST |
424.10 |
| Total + GST |
475.00 |
I’m not the type of person who would make a scene and it was only the start of the day and I didn’t want any negative energy on the last day of my parents’ visit. So I calmly walked away and looked at the other stores if indeed for some reason the prices of Guitar Hero went up, but every other store was selling it for 75 sgd.
I walked back to the store and the sales guy had vanished from the face of the earth.
I took a picture of the store to remind myself to just avoid the store in the future. I still like to go shopping at Sim Lim, but perhaps next time, I’ll make sure I get my dose of coffee first.
I also found it funny how the guy kept telling us about all the shady things people do at Lucky Plaza. It made me remember a saying my granddad told me and my brother: “The one who crackles is the one who lay egg". Of course in that scenario, me and my brother were blaming each other for farting.
