You mean retail resellers?

I did so for my rig back in 2014. Probably will do the same for the difficult and time-consuming parts such as the CPU, mobo, fans and case when I feel like getting a new rig. RAM, HDD, SSD and videocard will buy online locally and DIY myself since those are less of a hassle.

I bought some IT peripherals, an SSD, HDD and other components from the likes of EIT, BananaIT, Livinggears, etc., all of which have 'Preferred' status. So far the items I bought all worked well.

The best advice is to go for 'Preferred' and 'Mall' status vendors (as what the others here mentioned and in other threads) as they're reputable. "Mall' vendors mostly consist of official stores like Nestle, Toshiba, WD, Samsung, etc. but there are also a handful of reputable vendors like All IT which also achieved this status as well.

In general, most are reputable, and so far I haven't bumped into any issues when buying from them (and yes, I read the reviews of their products before going for it).

But I'm also aware that some of them are not selling 'brand new' items, which will surely be declared in the description and if you checked with that vendor on it before buying.

I have bought a 2nd hand Samsung S9 (US unit) from one of the 'Preferred' vendor there late last month (after doing my due diligence) and it came in pristine condition as if it's still new and working fine. Just that he needs to improve on applying the screen protector, tho.

Best of luck over there, mate.

As for the 5% surcharge when using cards, I can concur with the previous post above mine that it happened to me when I specc'ed my rig in 2014, but I recall that nowadays, this charge is either waived or its priced into their products. I recently bought an external HDD from one of the vendors at Digital Mall last year and didn't encounter this surcharge.

But the best part about getting the parts exclusively from one vendor is that they can assist with assembling your PC FOC from my last experience. Probably for my case in the near future, I may do the same, but only for the difficult components such as CPU, mobo, case, fans and AIO cooler to name a few. Other components such as GPU, HDD, SSD, etc. I plan to buy online and assemble it myself.

Same goes for Lazada and Grab as well when it comes to their 'E-wallets'. Even going as far as to promote credit cards tied to the above services. Starting to sound like they want to create their own ecosystem.

Too many e-wallets floating around the market these days, and sometimes do regard it as a hassle to 'reload' them whenever you need to buy something to take advantage of their promo/perks.