150 People File Police Report Against Durian Shop, Form FB Support Group

One of the customers who had mistakenly contacted Reece was Rachel Wong* (not her real name, due to her request for anonymity). The 34-year-old civil servant had paid $144 for three 800g boxes of Red Prawn durians from Durians Express Delivery.

But she only received one box despite ordering three. And instead of Red Prawn’s distinctively vivacious orange flesh, her durian (pictured) was pale yellow, and tasted “unripe”. She adds, “One [seed] was sour. My daughter spat it out. [Do they think] we haven’t eaten Red Prawn durians before? I thought they were Durian Express Delivery without the ‘s’. I wouldn’t [have deliberately] ordered from a non-established durian startup.”

Jason Tan (not his real name), 40, an analyst, spent $224 buying Black Thorn, Black Pearl and Old Tree Mao Shan Wang durians. But what he got was three boxes of “tasteless ice-crusted frozen durian lumps, some black at the corners, from indeterminate varieties”. In the photos he sent to 8days.sg, a thick layer of ice crystals could clearly be seen encrusting a durian seed.

Like Rachel, Jason did not receive any confirmation for his order. “I saw a mobile number from the store on my credit card statement — which read ‘Top Grade Cheap Frozen’, by the way — and messaged it. No reply. I bombarded them with messages again two days later and got a short reply to say the order was confirmed. When the [bad] durians came, I was shocked and messaged them multiple times. Since then, no reply!” he shares.

Other customers also received icy durians. F&B director Jovison Lim, 40, opened his three boxes of Mao Shan Wang, D24 and Red Prawn durians — which he paid $156 for — to find that they were frozen. “I tried to defrost one. It was so watery that when I picked up the durian, the seed was in my hand but the meat fell off. I asked [the shop] via Facebook message, ‘Is the durian fresh?’ They said it was. I told them, ‘No, it’s frozen and I want a refund.’ Then there was no more reply from them,” he recounts. “I presume their 100 percent refund guarantee is not genuine.”

Jovison and Rachel reveal they only got refunded after CAD contacted the shop to investigate (fellow victim Jason did not pursue a refund after being stonewalled by the shop). Rachel claims, “I’m sure there’s some mitigating factor [for the offending biz] if they refund us, so they chose [to do that]. But before [the authorities stepped in], they were happily blocking unhappy customers and deleting our comments on their FB page.” While she’s still waiting for her refund to be credited back to her credit card, Jovison says he had already received his refund on his card on July 22.

8days.sg also reached out to Durians Express Delivery for comment. A spokesperson for the shop tells us over the phone that he’s “not a worker, not a partner, just helping my friend Jasper”, whom he says started the business: “He started this ’cos it’s durian season, and a lot of people are trying to get extra income due to Covid-19. He isn’t a clear-minded business guy. He’s 26, and he was a merchandiser. He’s inexperienced and didn’t know how to handle it well.”

But when we pressed about why his durians were sold frozen, with some being rotten, the spokesperson replied: “The durians were frozen because of operations. It wasn’t intentional. [Jasper] wanted to chill it to ensure freshness. But he didn’t know what to do and engaged a lot of bad staff. He didn’t give clear instructions, so I don’t blame the staff. And there’ll always be one or two rotten durians in a basket. The QC wasn’t done and everything was sent out.”