The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice #1

My husband and I booked a photographer for our wedding photos and videos last year September 2012 hoping that he is a professional. We signed a contract that he will deliver everything within 2 weeks. To our surprise even now he has still not delivered everything.

He always lies saying he is done preparing them but when we get to his office we just wait and the most annoying and stressing thing is that he is advertising with our photos without our approval. He’s marketing his business on Facebook and even enlarged one of photos to market his frames at his office but we talked to him numerous times to take it down as we never approved of it and he is saying that we should buy the photo if we do not want our photo up in the wall.

His videos are poorly done and we told him about them and that we need a master copy to go do it somewhere professional he wants us to buy it yet we paid P6,500 and he still wants to milk more money from us that we do not have. At this point we do not want to deal with him at all as he is not truthful and unprofessional.

We’ll be happy if you can help us in this matter.

This is disgraceful but I’m afraid I’m not surprised. There seem to be so many companies that do their best to ruin people’s weddings. It’s not just photographers, it can be the venues and the organisers as well. They seem to forget that weddings are (hopefully) once in a lifetime events and require a higher than normal quality of service.

Clearly these guys have breached the Consumer Protection Regulations by not offering a service that is “of merchantable quality” or is “fit for the purpose”. They’ve also not delivered a service “with reasonable care and skill”. They’ve also breached their contract with you. Can you send me a copy of the contract you signed with them so we can take a look at that?

Meanwhile we’ll get in touch with them on your behalf and see if they can’t do the decent thing.

Update: We got in touch with the photographer and things have now been resolved.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

I have a situation that needs to be attended. There is a certain transaction that is suppose to take place from the Bank of Scotland (attended by Fred Watt) to here in Botswana but for it to happen I need a power of attorney from a lawyer who lives in Senegal because the owner of the money is living there. This particular lawyer (Barr (Dr) Jonas Zillan) who I contacted needs $870 for the power of attorney to be prepared, so what I need is help from you to confirm if my money is safe before I do the transaction.

This is how this whole thing started. I met this girl Roses Daulah on a dating website and she told me she is in Senegal but originally from Sudan. She left Sudan but had no travelling documents but luckily she had found her late father's company documents which showed that the company had 2.7million US dollars which named her as the next of kin. For her to be in possession of the money she needs me as her foreign partner so that she could also come and stay with me here in Botswana. She told me to talk to the Bank of Scotland where the money is and the bank gave me certain. After I receive the money I should send her money to prepare her travelling documents to come and stay with, me from this money I also get 25% for helping her escape and 5% for expenses.

This is a scam, there’s no doubt about it. Please do not send ANY money to these people. This is a very good example of an “advance fee” scam. In particular it’s a good example of the “refugee camp” scam. The story is always roughly the same. A woman, always a young attractive one, is in a refugee camp, but curiously they have access to the internet and email but not to a cellphone. There is ALWAYS a priest looking after her, and always an attorney and a banker involved. In reality they are all the same person just using different free email addresses.

Click here to email the fake girl a rude message.
Click here to email the fake lawyer a rude message.
Click here to email the fake banker a rude message.

Let’s face some simple facts. The girl does not exist. The contact at Bank of Scotland doesn’t exist. The lawyer in Senegal doesn’t exist. None of them are real, they are ALL the inventions of scammers who are trying to get that $870 from you. If you send them the money they’ll just keep asking for more until you finally realise that you’ve been scammed. Remember that scammers don’t offer refunds.