The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice #1

I understand that a company called Legend Venture is from Singapore and has agents in South Africa. They have a series of group meetings at a local hotel recruiting Batswana to buy shares from them. The presenters are from South Africa.

I did some checking in the internet and the company history is well outlined but because I know that internet can be used for bad things I don't know whether to trust this and join. They invite you to join the scheme with a packages from one thousand rand and you have to deposit the money in a South African bank as a bank transfer.

I want your help as experts to check further whether this business is something to invest my money in?

I really think you should be very careful about investing in a company like this. Let’s face it, do real companies sell their shares in presentations in hotels? No, that’s not how things work in real life. From what I hear these presenters suggest that Legend Venture buys up failing companies and then somehow, perhaps miraculously, suddenly has offers large returns to it’s shareholders as a result. But does this actually make any sense to you? It certainly doesn’t to me.

There IS what seems like a genuine investment company called Legend Ventures but this is not the same thing. The company you’ve met is Legend Venture, without the ‘s’ at the end. The people you’ve met are marketing what many people around the world, including just across the border in South Africa, consider to be yet another pyramid scheme.

I think you really need to be extremely skeptical about anyone who offers you any form of Get Rich Quick Scheme, particularly when, as you explained in a later email, you’re encouraged to recruit other people beneath you from whom you’ll earn a commission? As you also said in your later email at no point could they actually explain how you’ll make money from these “shares”.

I really think you should steer way clear of these people unless you really want to throw your hard-earned money away.

[Guess what. The people behind Legend Venture appear to be some of the same people selling TVI Express.]

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

First and foremost I would like to thank you for the insightful articles. I'm writing this email to you because I think you are the only person that can help me clarify this issue.

What are the proper charges for not putting on a safety belt when you are stopped by a cop? Why is it that we are advised to not stop at traffic lights when its after midnight but cops can flag you and want to charge you for running over a red light? Is that not exploiting us? Lastly where can I find all the relevant information regarding road charges?

Am I correct in assuming you’ve recently been pulled over by the boys and girls in blue? If not and this is just a theoretical question please forgive what I’m about to say.

Why on earth were you driving without a seatbelt? Have you never seen what happens to someone not wearing a seatbelt when they hit a wall or another car? Surely by now we’ve all seen a dead body on one of our roads? I know I have, lots of them.

If you’re still in doubt do a Google search for “seatbelt video” and among the 7,000,000 hits you’ll find an enormous variety of archived advertisements as well as a number of gruesome images of what happens when you don’t put one on.

Also, where did you hear or see this “advice” that you’re permitted to ignore red lights at night? No, sorry, red lights mean stop 24 hours a day. If you run a red at any time of day you run the risk of being pulled over by the police and being made to pay a fine. You also risk killing yourself. If you really have a death wish combine the two and run some red lights on a Friday in Gabz while not wearing a seatbelt. The experience is guaranteed to end with a bang.

As for the precise penalties you’ll face I don’t know but I‘ll do my best to find out and put it online for you.