My $0.02 on service in Singapore
Well, I live in the CBD and do all my shopping in the City Hall, Bugis and Orchard Road areas and in general, service at all those places is pretty darned excellent nowadays.
Why, just 2 days ago I went with a friend of mine to Funan Centre so he could buy a new router cos his old one's just given up the ghost lately. Actually it's my old Linksys BEFW11S4 that I gave him after I got a free router from Starhub for upgrading my MaxOnline plan (BTW: Boys and girls- don't buy Linksys routers. Every one I've used has given me no end of headaches). Anyway, we reached there quite late at 8:30pm and most of the shops were already closed. But we found a shop on the 5th floor that was still open and lucky for us they sold networking equipment! We went in and I asked the guy at the shop- knowledgable looking guy in his 40s or so- which wireless router he'd recommend to us.
There was a number of different models on the shelves there but he took one of the shelf right away and showed it to us- twas the Netgear WGR614. It's quite an attractively designed router with an Apple-inspired white color scheme and nice rounded corners. But more importantly, it was one of the cheaper models at S$75.00 and it came with a 3-years warranty! Our salesguy confirmed that a lot of people had problems with Linksys routers but he claimed that so far, he hadn't heard of any problems with the Netgear one. Well, one could be cynical and say that of course he'd say that- he's trying to sell that model! But he also had Linksys routers in his store so I doubt he was just giving us a load of bull to make a sale.
So like, he was really informative and explained the differences between the model he recommended and the more expensive models and why he thought this one was the best buy. In the end it was his the combination of his testimony, the sweet price, the 3-year warranty (compared to a mere year for Linksys) and a nice little PC World recommendation stamp on the router's box that sold me on the router so I told my friend to go ahead and buy it. So far he hasn't had any problems with it. And if he does- got 3 year warranty what!
If not for that salesdude recommending us the Netgear router, I think we'd probably have ended up going for yet another Linkys router- despite their suckiness, we didn't know of any better routers (D-Link ones are even worse). And you know what, he was so nice that he listened to my sob-story about my own router- it crashes once a week for no apparent reason and I have to turn my modem and router off and back on again to get it to work- told me to download new firmware and even offered to help me upgrade my routers firmware if I couldn't do it myself. Like, for free! Coolness.
