By Terry Xu
A reader wrote in via facebook to us on an incident he experienced at his HDB flat located at Bukit Panjang.
“Recently there are these durian scams going around which i had experienced personally just yesterday night (Thursday) at the doorstep of my HDB flat. The seller was a Malaysian Chinese will keep insisting that you try first and no obligations to buy.
Then he will proceed to open the durians. After trying he will quote a price like $150 for 3 durians. When you refuse, he will not leave and insists that you buy at least the opened durian which costs $50 dollars. the seller was really insistent and refused to leave until i made call to police.”
When the reader then called the police to inform them of the person peddling at his door and demanding to be paid an extravagant sum of money for the durians. When police call operator took up the phone, he told the operator that they will not get the guy if they come now as he had already ran off. She then took down his name and number and hung up immediately, which he assume to be dispatching the police to go after the man.
After calling the police, the reader went to take a look at the carpark below his block to see if he could catch a glimpse of the lorry of the person, but was not able see any vehicle from his angle of view.
The police has so far yet to call the reader up to ask for further details of the incident nor to have his NRIC to file a formal police case on the incident.
TOC dropped down to the reader’s block and checked with the residents living there. Residents said that they too have seen the durian seller yesterday but did not try the durians. One of the residents said that the police should be able to track down the person as the police has already installed and activated cameras at the lift lobby and staircases of the block to track loanshark runners.
One elderly Chinese male resident of the block said that he knows someone have purchased the durian for $80 from one of such seller and also seen the person selling yesterday but declined to purchase any. Another elderly Chinese female resident said that the seller quoted her 10 over dollars per kg from what she recalled.
Residents of the neighbouring blocks however did not report seeing this durian seller, only one of the residents living a couple of blocks away said that she have seen such durian seller one or two months ago at her flat but did not purchase any durians from the person.
A elderly Malay resident living at the ground floor of a nearby block said that he see such door to door peddlers at times during weekends, peddling goods from Johor.
The reader added, “Hopefully most Singaporeans will be aware of this and do not entertain these scammers. But as they are armed with durian knife, do not go into direct confrontation with them.”
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