The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice #1

Please advise me on what to do. My story is that I deposited a bed for P200 in a furniture shop in Gaborone and the bed was to be delivered to my place but after two weeks the bed was still not yet delivered. Because I bought it on credit I found that I cannot avoid to pay.

I went to the furniture shop and told them my problem but they told me that they cannot give me my money back rather I can have something in the shop for the same amount, but I found nothing in the shop of my interest the manager of shop told me that the money I paid for deposit they cannot give it back to me. What do you do in such a situation?

Please advise.

This is totally unacceptable. You paid a deposit and signed a contract to buy the furniture and they’ve not delivered it. The store has completely failed in their contract with you. Their suggestion that you are obliged to choose something else instead is utter nonsense and you are perfectly entitled to tell them to stick their offer where the sun doesn’t shine.

In fact I think you are totally within your rights to reject the whole thing. Write them a letter saying that they have completely failed in their contract with you, that you are therefore cancelling the entire arrangement and that they must also cancel any financial obligations you agreed to.

Please send us the name of the store and we’ll get in touch to reinforce your objections and see if we can persuade the store to play fair.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

There is an European agency that says it helps people get employment in the EU countries and they say the don’t charge us employment seekers anything but then they say we need an identification number in the labor office of the EU. They suggested some companies that deal with this paperwork and those companies charge us 33 Euros to process the paperwork and obtain the I.D number. I want to know if they are legit? Their email is office@londonjobs-4u.com.

I’m suspicious. Firstly, based on long experience, I’m always suspicious of recruitment companies that “help” people get jobs overseas. We’ve come across many of them in the last few years and almost all of them have been crooks.

I’m also skeptical about companies that seem to operate from no more than an email address. The address you gave isn’t associated with a web site. In fact the “londonjobs-4u.com” domain was only registered in February of this year so it’s not as if they have a track record behind them.

The only reference I could find to them is a warning from the Philippines about various recruitment scams that mentioned the email address you mentioned.

Finally you have to ask yourself a bigger question. Why, when their economies are in torment and many European countries have high levels of local unemployment, would they be recruiting staff from our neck of the woods?

I suggest that you forget these people unless you particularly want to lose your money.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #3

There was a company which owed me P1,300 and they were not paying for months. I engaged some debt collectors in April 2011 to help me get the money back from the company. They made me pay P300 for costs that will be used for collecting the debt. The day after I engaged him he called me and said the company had paid and said I should come and collect the money. The following day I called to collect the money, and he said I can only collect my money on the 30th April which was not disclosed in our first meeting. There was nothing I could do so I just waited for the 30th. I went to them at the end of April to collect the money but they postponed, and it was postponement after postponement until now. The owner has kept telling me tomorrow and now he is not even answering his cellphone.

Please help.

It’s ironic that you might need to engage the services of another debt collector to collect the money from the first bunch of debt collectors. I think you’ve had enough delays, don’t you? I also think that you’ve done more than enough running around and chasing. You are, after all, their customer. It’s time they started treating you like one.

I suggest that you write to them or fax them a letter politely explaining that you’ve given them more than enough time. Demand that they deliver the money to you and that if they fail to do so you’ll take them to the Small Claims Court. Do they really want to be a debt collector with a debt?