The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer's Voice

A few months ago I bought a canopy for my bakkie for P7,000 from a supplier in Gaborone. Since then it has repeatedly leaked and I have returned it each time to the suppliers to be fixed. I live in Serowe so this costs me a lot of money as well as time and inconvenience. It still leaks after all the repairs and I’ve had enough of taking it all the way back to Gaborone.

What can I do?

We think you should take it back one more time but this time don’t bring it back.

Write them a letter saying that you believe that they have failed to meet their obligations under Section 13 (1) (a) of the Consumer Protection Regulations. This states that a product or service must be of “merchantable quality” which means that it must be “fit for the purposes for which commodities of that kind are usually purchased”. Canopies for bakkies are to stop the rain and wind getting in and yours doesn’t do that so it’s not of merchantable quality. In your letter tell them that they have had several opportunities to fix the problem but you no longer believe it can be fixed. You should also tell them that if the problem isn’t with the canopy itself it is their fault for not fixing it on properly. Section 15 (1) (a) of the Regulations says that they have failed to meet minimum standards if they did not fit the canopy “with reasonable care and skill”. Either way they have let you down and failed to deliver what the law says you are entitled to.

You should politely tell them that you reject the canopy and demand a full refund. Give them perhaps 7 days to make the refund. If they haven’t given you your money back by then tell them they can have their picture in The Voice for free!

Serve the Public

I’ll be perfectly honest. I really am in two minds about what we should expect from the Government, or rather what I prefer to call the Public Service. I’ve no real complaint with our Government, our elected leaders, law-makers and representatives. They do a fairly good job and, best of all, they tend to keep out of our way and not bother us too much.

It’s the Public Service I have a problem with.

It’s our attitude towards them and, worse still, their attitude towards us that bothers me. For any Government employee who hasn’t worked it out yet, let me spell it out for you. There’s a reason it’s called the Public Service. It’s because you are there to Serve the Public. Not yourself, not your convenience and not your ego. You are there to serve me and my neighbours.

So why do we put up with those Government Departments that have a job to do but who completely ignore their obligations? Why do we allow them to ignore us, their customers? Yes, that’s what we are. We are their customers. Before anyone thinks that the Public Service is different because we don’t pay them for a service, let me correct you. We do. We pay them. We pay them money, sometimes even hard cash. Every thebe we pay in income tax goes to them. Every time we pay for a driving licence, for a replacement Omang card, for a passport the money goes to them. Every time we buy something and pay VAT we are paying them. Paying them for a service.

Every time I go to a restaurant or a bar and buy something with my money I am a customer and I have expectations about how I should be treated. So long as I don’t get drunk, become obnoxious and start hitting people I deserve to be treated with respect and courtesy. Why? Because I’ve paid for that. Not just for beer and pizza but for a service as well.

The Public Service is no different. Every time I pay VAT I am paying them to do their job and I have a right to expect decent service from them in return.

The Police are a very good example. We are paying them to do their job. You and I are their customers. We have a right to demand they enforce the law. We have a right to see them stopping combi drivers for driving like psychopaths, taxi-driving imbeciles who seem to have forgotten what those flashing yellow lights on each corner of the car are for and moronic BX drivers who seem to think red means “Go faster. Yes, you CAN get through!”

To be fair though, just last week they were out in force in Gaborone. Between the office and the customer I was visiting I saw 5 or 6 police units stopping vehicles. It was great to see it and I didn’t get stopped (this time) so I felt very good.

Then there’s the Consumer Protection Unit. We pay these people to do a number of things, things they are required to do by law. As well as educating us about our rights, which I’ve never seen them doing, they are also required by law to “receive and investigate complaints of unfair business practices”. Then they are required to “assist a consumer or class of consumers to initiate civil or criminal proceedings arising from an unfair business practice”. Can’t say I’ve ever seen that happen either. Finally they are (take a deep breath) required to “do all such other things as may be necessary to protect consumers from purchasing or otherwise acquiring substandard goods or services or from being otherwise exploited”.

The Consumer Protection Act doesn’t say that they have “the right to do all these things”. It doesn’t say they are “allowed” to do these things. It doesn’t say that they can do all these things “if they can be bothered”. It says that they “shall” do these things. So why aren’t they?

Go on. Ask yourself. Why aren’t they doing these things?

It’s because you and I have forgotten that we pay them to do these things. We have forgotten that they are our servants, we are their customers. If a restaurant doesn’t bring me the food I’ve ordered then I’m going to get all stroppy, demand to see the manager and get what I’ve paid for. So I should do exactly the same if the Public Service lets me down. I should demand to see the relevant managers and remind them that I am their customer, they are my servants. I pay for their salary, their pension and their copy of the Daily News that they spend so long reading every day. They owe me. They owe you. They owe all of us.

So as I said at the beginning I’m in two minds about what we should expect. Should we perhaps just give up expecting decent service from our Public Servants and instead rely on voluntary organisations like Consumer Watchdog and our good friends at Mmegi to protect us? Or should we start demanding what we’ve paid for from the Public Service?

What do you think?

This week’s stars!

• Bonang Maplanka who works for Department of Tourism in Maun. Our reader lost her cellphone in Maun and gave up hope of ever seeing it again. However Mr Maplanka found it, searched through the contacts in the phone, made a few calls and our reader now has her phone back. Apparently this isn’t the first time Mr Maplanka has done this. Our reader said “In this world of crooks, such characters are rare”. Rest assured we’ll be making sure he is recognised for this. We’ll be writing to the Minister of Tourism and his Permanent Secretary to make sure he gets celebrated by his colleagues and we’re working n a plan to celebrate him ourselves. Watch this space!

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer's Voice

I received a text message on my phone recently from a loans company advertising their services that even offered me a free umbrella if I took out a loan from them. I don’t know how they got my number as I’ve never had any dealings with the company. I wasn’t interested so I just ignored the message. However in the following 48 hours I received a total of 25 identical messages from them. Some of these messages even arrived in the middle of the night. I called the company and they said other people had also complained but there was nothing they could do about it and didn’t even apologise.

What can I do?

Well, to begin with you can sit back and laugh at how much it must have cost them to send out all those messages. If you got 25 there’s every chance everyone did as well. Yes, it’s irritating but it must have cost them a fortune.

There have been similar cases in other countries where people who were pestered by marketing companies successfully took legal action on the grounds that they had cost the recipient money. Money for the electricity used to receive and display the message. However you can really only take action after you’ve made it clear to the company that their messages are unwelcome.

However you have to ask how they got your number. Did your cellphone company, or your bank or some other company you deal with sell your number?

You should make it clear to the company that their messages are not welcome. Write to them and tell them never to send you messages again. Tell them that if they do you will hold them responsible for the cost of the electricity to charge your phone and the cost of complaining. Tell them that if you receive just one more message their CEO can expect a visit from a reporter and a photographer from The Voice!

Stop whining

OK, I accept that this might not be very tolerant, very understanding and very sympathetic and it may also seem strange coming from someone who is a passionate advocate of consumer power but sometimes the constant whining we hear just gets to me and I become all grumpy and impatient.

I suppose I should start by confessing that yes I DO understand that we consumers have quite a bit to complain about. We ARE often abused, tricked, deliberately confused and generally ripped off by a range of organisations. There ARE companies out there who will sell us membership of their clubs while neglecting to tell us about the lifetime commitment we have to make. There ARE companies who sell cheap computers with pirated software on them. There ARE many stores selling pirated films that are, more often than not, of such a terrible quality that you can hardly watch them. There are garages who will take your car, do second-rate repairs, lose your mag wheels and then tell you to get lost when you complain.

Above all there are the scandalous, wicked and utterly immoral charlatans who try to sell us miracle cures for our illnesses, playing on our fears, our desperation and our need to grasp at straws.

However, and please forgive a brief diversion, some of them are just ludicrous and it always amazes me that people still fall for the nonsense they offer. In the papers last week we were offered the delights of one Dr Kapeni, a herbalist who assures us he will never “let you down” which is amusing as his skills seem to be focussed on “man wood problems”. I couldn’t quite work out what “Take out bad luck same time” meant though.

Then there were the services of Pieter Bezuidenhout, who my acute senses tell me might be South African. Apparently he’s visiting Botswana next month and is offering various consultative services as an “Accurate Capetonian Psychic”. As well as personal consultation he also offers telephonic and, get this, “postal readings”. Now of course I’m not going to tell you not to partake of Pieter’s services but if you are deranged enough to do so please make sure you remind him that telling fortunes is illegal in Botswana. You can also tell him that services as well as products are covered by our very comprehensive laws. If any of his psychic predictions turn out to be not perfectly accurate you can accuse him of not delivering services of merchantable quality and therefore failing to meet his obligations under Section 13 (1) (a) of the Consumer Protection Regulations. Just make him sign something before you hand over any of your money, OK?

What can stop these people? You and I can. It’s up to you and me.

Back to the issue…

Yes, there are people trying to separate us from our hard-earned money with their slimy, scheming tricks, of course there are and we at Consumer Watchdog will always do our best to help people who have fallen victim to them. However many situations are completely within our control and frankly we should be standing up for ourselves and not complaining when we don’t get what we want. It’s really up to you and me.

I know that I’ve gone on and on about the power crisis and I KNOW that there is lots of blame that can be cast around in the direction of Eskom and the past leaders of BPC but that’s another subject. The most important issue is what we, that’s you and I, are going to do about it. What are we prepared to do to help save power? Are we prepared to make some sacrifices and do our patriotic duty? It’s really up to you and me.

Then there’s the constant moaning and whining we hear about the role of government. I’m very sorry to go on about this as well but what do we really expect from Government? I know a lot of people in government rather well and I’ve had the privilege to work with some incredibly talented government employees but I can’t help avoid making one observation. As a country we can’t see the difference between government and the Public Service. There is a huge difference between governing the people and serving them. Parliament governs us but the rest of them serve us. They are our servants, they are there to deliver services to you and me, the citizens, residents and tax-payers of Botswana. The sooner we start treating public service employees the same way that we treat the employees of a bank, a restaurant or a supermarket the better. There is good news though. Certain parts of the Public Service are repeatedly being celebrated. Staff from the Department of Road Transport & Safety are often celebrated because they really seem to have turned the corner and have focussed on customer service. It CAN be done.

Yes, I know that the Public Service has a long way to go but there is actually only one thing that will take them further. Only when you and I start demanding service from our public servants will they start delivering it. It’s up to you and me.

Yes, I know I sound intolerant and impatient but the only way we can improve the quality of service in our country is when WE make it improve.. We can’t wait for other people to do it for us. So let’s stop whining about how bad things are and DEMAND that things improve.

It’s up to you and me.

This week’s stars!

• Oabile at the Engen One-Stop on the Western Bypass in Gaborone, the one with the Wimpy, for his friendliness.
• Mma Makula from Barclays Bank for helping to fix a customer’s problem. Our readers says that it is “people like Mma Makula who give us hope that excellent service and botho are not entirely dead and inspire those of us in the service industry to try to excel at our jobs”.
• Thulani at the Riverwalk Woolworths who was very willing to help resolve a customer’s problem. She says he’s “A lovely guy!”
• Kathleen at Standard Chartered Mall Branch in Gaborone for excellent follow up on a customer query.

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer's Voice

I recently went to a computer store that advertised in The Advertiser to buy a cheap computer for use at home. The computer cost P2,499 which seemed like a very good price. I paid them a deposit of P1,000 and went the next day to pay them the rest. However then they told me I had to pay extra for software. I assumed that the price included everything but they wanted P600 more from me. I couldn’t afford this so I told them that I had changed my mind and wanted my money back but they refused.

What can I do?

You can demand your money back immediately. The Consumer Protection Regulations are very clear. If a supplier mislead you about what you were buying you can cancel the whole deal. Then they must return your deposit to you without delay. From what you say it sounds like they misrepresented the computer they were offering you. Unless you told them that you were a computer expert they should have assumed that you were not. They should have explained to you that the computer you were buying wasn’t useable unless you bought the software it needs to work.

Computers are like cars. A car doesn’t work without fuel, a computer doesn’t work without software. They should have told you this before taking your money.

The other question is what they offered to give you for the additional P600. Every computer requires an operating system and additional software that allows you to write letters, use spreadsheets and send email. You can get some operating systems and software for free but most people use Microsoft Windows and Windows software, most of which you have to buy. P600 seems a very strange amount either for the free stuff or for the software you must buy. It’s possible what you were offered was illegal.

The lesson is to ask up front what you are buying and get them to put it in writing. Then take it to someone you trust who knows about computers and get their advice. Never, ever, under any circumstances accept pirated software. It won’t work properly and you will have no legal rights. Be warned!

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer's Voice

I recently went to a computer store that advertised in The Advertiser to buy a cheap computer for use at home. The computer cost P2,499 which seemed like a very good price. I paid them a deposit of P1,000 and went the next day to pay them the rest. However then they told me I had to pay extra for software. I assumed that the price included everything but they wanted P600 more from me. I couldn’t afford this so I told them that I had changed my mind and wanted my money back but they refused.

What can I do?

You can demand your money back immediately. The Consumer Protection Regulations are very clear. If a supplier mislead you about what you were buying you can cancel the whole deal. Then they must return your deposit to you without delay. From what you say it sounds like they misrepresented the computer they were offering you. Unless you told them that you were a computer expert they should have assumed that you were not. They should have explained to you that the computer you were buying wasn’t useable unless you bought the software it needs to work.

Computers are like cars. A car doesn’t work without fuel, a computer doesn’t work without software. They should have told you this before taking your money.

The other question is what they offered to give you for the additional P600. Every computer requires an operating system and additional software that allows you to write letters, use spreadsheets and send email. You can get some operating systems and software for free but most people use Microsoft Windows and Windows software, most of which you have to buy. P600 seems a very strange amount either for the free stuff or for the software you must buy. It’s possible what you were offered was illegal.

The lesson is to ask up front what you are buying and get them to put it in writing. Then take it to someone you trust who knows about computers and get their advice. Never, ever, under any circumstances accept pirated software. It won’t work properly and you will have no legal rights. Be warned!

Let's discriminate

In the late 1980s I worked in the Human Resources Department of a large public sector organisation in the UK. At that time the British public sector was going through one of it’s regular competitions to see who could be the most politically correct. At the time the newspapers were full of stories of schools banning nursery rhymes like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” because it was deemed to be racist and councils saying they no longer had manhole covers because that was sexist language. In fact almost all of these stories turned out to be completely false, made up by the disgraceful elements of the British tabloid media to sell more newspapers but it was a sign of the times.

Organisations like mine, when they advertised vacancies, would struggle to find reasons why they wouldn’t discriminate against you. Every vacancy advertisement stated that you would not be disadvantaged because of your sex, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability status or shoe size. Each week the list seemed to get longer and longer.

Now of course this is all perfectly good. We shouldn’t disadvantage people because of these things. However my objection was to the complexity of it. My idea to my HR Director was to turn things upside down, back to front and inside out and he liked it. For a couple of weeks all our advertisements stated that we WOULD discriminate. We came out of the closet as a discriminatory employer. Instead of being negative we listed all the reasons we would discriminate. There was only one. Talent. We only wanted to hire talented people. The rest really didn’t matter to us.

Well it didn’t last, there were complaints and we had to cancel the idea and go back to explaining that we wouldn’t discriminate against you if you had big ears, cross eyes or a strange haircut.

The general point was taken though. Discrimination is not inherently a bad thing. It just depends HOW you discriminate. Obviously people who discriminate against people because they are a particular colour, gender or status are scumbags. However we all discriminate in a variety of perfectly acceptable ways every time we shop. Every time we choose one store, one brand or one cute salesperson we are discriminating and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Smart suppliers are aware of this. Competition brings out the best in stores, restaurants and even media outlets. Persuading your customers, listeners or viewers that they should discriminate in your favour is a key component in any company’s business. I can think of two ways to do this.

The first is to be better than your competitors. Deliver a better service or product. Make your pizza the best in town, your steak the juiciest or your fresh bread the most delicious. Make your insurance policy the cheapest or with the best payout. Make your car the safest, the most economical and the sexiest.

This is the conventional approach that you see almost everywhere. Everyone understands this. If companies don’t then they tend not to last very long.

The other approach is to be different. Do something qualitatively different. Not just better but utterly different. I think that companies like Virgin Atlantic fit into this category. Yes, they are just another airline but they do things with a level of humour, friendliness and warmth that very few other airlines can match. Apple make computers that are just different to the everyday ones most of us are forced to use. Primi Piatti does more than just pizza and pasta. It does them so well that I think they are in a completely different category to the other pizzas you can get.

Being different can be scary though. So often you see companies losing that special something so they can be more obviously comparable to their competitors. We’re seeing that at the moment with our private radio stations. There was a time when GabzFM and YaronaFM were obviously, noticeably, tangibly different. They each focussed on a different community. GabzFM focussed much more on conversations, discussions and had a unique morning drive-time element but where has that gone now? Where is their difference? The thing that made them special?

Sometimes it easier to see the companies that are different. Last year we wrote to all stores that sell products on credit explaining to them that they were ignoring the law. They seemed to have overlooked the law that requires them to clearly state the total credit cost in any advertisement that offers something on credit. Only Ellerines responded properly, promising that they would change by February this year. However in the Advertiser last week was an advertisement from Beares doing exactly this. The full credit price shown clearly. OK, it’s not in “characters of similar size” but it is there so I’m not going to complain. Good for Beares and I’m looking forward to seeing Ellerines doing the same as well.

Such a shame about the others though. The ones who have completely ignored our letter and don’t seem to care that they are breaking the law. Wouldn’t it be terrible if we started discriminating against them?

This week’s stars!

• Alice at Standard Chartered Bank Industrial Branch for great follow up. Apparently she heard a customer’s problem, phoned back 3 times to check on progress and assist the customer.
• Tau at First National Bank Corporate Banking for amazing service.
• Emelyn at Facilities Management Group for being a super star.

Phatsimo from G4 Security for helping a customer at an ATM when the power went down. The customer offered him a tip afterwards but he refused saying he was just doing his job!

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer's Voice

Do you think it is advisable for University or College students to apply for credit cards or store cards? I am just wondering if they know how these things work and the impact they can have on their lives.

Great question.

The answer is that it depends. It depends on the amount of self-control you have, the store you get the card from and what you end up doing with it.

Students are at a very dangerous point in their lives. Often for the very first time they are in control of their money. Even the most hard-headed student is going to be tempted by what all sorts of people offer them. Banks tend to be rather sensible with students but other institutions can be less scrupulous. They are going to offer store cards and credit purchase schemes that offer students the ability to get something today rather than when they can actually afford it. Unfortunately some stores are not going to be as open and honest as they should be.

Often interest charges can be astronomical. We’ve seen interests rates on store credit schemes as high as 390% per year. Then are the hidden costs like compulsory insurance, delivery charges and arrangement fees. All contribute towards the customer paying much more than they can afford.

If, and only if, the conditions are reasonable, the interest charged is low and there are no ridiculous hidden charges then perhaps store cards can be a good idea but this is a pretty rare situation.

Our general advice for students is the same as we give to everyone else. Avoid credit whenever you can. Buy things second hand if you really need them. Live within your means. If you really must borrow, then borrow from the most affordable and reasonable lenders in the market. Your parents.

Power to the people?

Before everyone who knows me thinks I’ve gone back to my very early socialist roots (I was young, OK?) let me assure them that no, sanity still prevails.

In fact I think that the supposedly revolutionary cry of “Power to the people” is actually the very essence of radical libertarianism and very little to do with the politics of the radical left or the radical right. I was in the Philippines a decade after the truly wonderful overthrow of that old fascist crook Ferdinand Marcos by what Philippinos proudly call “People Power”. Over 3 million ordinary people took to the streets and demanded liberty and freedom from the corruption and nepotism that characterise all dictatorships. They didn’t want worker’s committees dictating what they could buy, they didn’t want public ownership of the means of production and they certainly didn’t want the government telling them what they were permitted to think. All they wanted was the right to make an honest living, hang out with their friends talking politics over a few beers and to be left alone by people in authority.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing in the Philippines, they’ve subsequently had to throw out another president for his outrageous corruption but at least they were allowed to do so.

So anyway, yes, I do believe that power should rest with the people. The people should have the power to control their future.

And yes, this IS all a rather contrived way of going on about the power crisis again.

It’s not often that ordinary consumers like you and me can shape the future of a country. It’s not often we can determine whether our country continues to develop and be an example to the rest of the world that things CAN work in Africa and that they DO work, really quite normally in Botswana. It’s not often that as the people of a nation we can say whether the nation succeeds.

Last week I was listening to a discussion on SAFM. Yes, sorry, but I like to hear intelligent conversations on radio and we seem to have misplaced our best talk-show host recently. Anyway someone was suggesting that if Eskom can’t sort out the power crisis in SA then there is a real risk that nobody will come to the World Cup in 2010. Tourists tend to want hotels with electricity to keep the beer cold after all.

Don’t we face the same problem? Paraffin lamps are fun and exotic the first few times you use them but visitors bringing all that lovely foreign currency DO want a few luxuries every now and then. Investors in our economy also want all those first-world things like broadband internet access, satellite TV and cellphones that we can offer them but all these things need electricity. If we fail to sort out this problem then those investors we need for our economy to continue to grow will go elsewhere to make money. They’ll choose some other country to pay their taxes.

I think that the choice is simple. We can sit back, blame everything on Botswana Power Corporation, Eskom, globalisation, the government, George W Bush and your chosen international conspiracy or we can DO something about it.

Yes, of course BPC should have started building more power stations several years ago. Yes of course we should have endless, uninterruptible power, ice cream should be good for you and the weather should always be perfect. But none of these things have happened. Rather than spend all day finding someone to blame I think we should be fixing the situation we find ourselves in. We need to stop whining like spoilt teenagers about how unfair life is and start sorting our lives out and not waiting for someone else to do it for us.

Stop wasting electricity. Buy energy-saving light bulbs. Turn your geyser off during the day. Turn your pool pump off when your pool is already perfectly clean. We can all work it out for ourselves.

What about the other ways you can save power that you’ll probably not hear BPC suggesting?

Turn the TV off and read a book or even have a conversation with your partner. Save energy heating your bath by sharing it with someone else. Obviously a good friend, not just the pizza delivery man. Well, I suppose if you can’t find a tip when he arrives… On a cold evening find a more creative way of generating some heat. That might involve a good friend as well. Maybe even your husband or wife.

Condoms do not require electricity.

I really do think that the choice is simple. Do we want to go back in time to 1966 and become a third-world country again or do we want to maintain our place as a developing and ever-so-nearly developed nation. I know which I want.

I’m off to save some power…

This week’s stars!

• Yet again the guys at Video Ezee at Riverwalk for being friendly, hard-working and being right next to a bar and within staggering distance of Primi Piatti. What more could you want?
• Gabo at Pick N Pay at Molapo Crossing for being tremendous at customer service.

Please understand I’m not making this up because of the column above but Punchie and Godiramang, both from BPC for excellent customer service during power cuts.