Saturday 27 November 2021

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Should I get my goods?

May you please help me get my money back from a company that advertises on Facebook. They scammed me of my heard earned P1,000 that I sent to them for quilt bedding sets on 8th September. I did a bank transfer and they did confirm receipt and later said they will send them after 5 days when they receive new stock because they were now our of stock of my bed size because I had paid for super king bedding sets.

I have tried to reach out to them but they no longer respond to my messages on Whatsapp and my number has been blocked.


I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I've dealt with this company before on behalf of another consumer. They were not very helpful then and refused to even deal with her because she had criticised them on Facebook. They have a habit of going silent on people who dare to criticise them.

The good news is that this time they're talking to me. Maybe they developed a conscience? And maybe they realised that giving their customers the silent treatment doesn't help their business.

They responded to my messages and told me "I believe they all received a message from us that we had a delay for deliveries since we had closed down for almost a month. The team is working on re-delivering all orders that had returned back to the office, they should have received they order by end of this month. Thank you."

With luck this means you'll get what you paid for. If they let you down again, I think it's time to take the gloves off and report them to various authorities. We can start with the Competition and Consumer Authority who have the power to demand they do what the law demands. But maybe we should report them to a body that is even scarier, a group that genuinely can make or break a company? Readers of The Voice. Do they really want to take that risk?

Should I get a refund?

I bought an ice pop machine and the machine worked the day they trained us to use it but from then onwards the machine never worked. That was April, I reported the problem to the owner and he promised to give us another machine but till date no machine. In August after losing so much business I asked him to please refund me my money and take his machine.

He keeps on making me false promises. What do I do in such a case? He has even blocked my calls.

May you please advise me what do I do?


I really don't understand why some suppliers think it's a good idea to go silent on the customers they've let down. Do they really think that this will make customers give up? Will it really allow them to keep their customer's money and not give them the products and services they paid for?

No, it won't.

The Consumer Protection Act says a few things about situations like this. It says that consumers have a right "to receive goods which are of good quality, in good working order and free of defects". If they fail to do that, the Act says they must either "repair or replace the defective goods" or "refund the consumer the amount already paid". I don't think that's hard to understand.

I contacted the guy and he responded quite quickly. He told me that he'd already spoken to you and agreed to repay you P1,200 since you used some of the products that came with machine, the flavours, colours, chemicals and the icepop tubing. He also told me that you agreed he can repay you in several instalments. He promised me that he'll pay you P600 by 27th November and the rest the following week.

Let's see if he keeps his promise. If he doesn't, I think he might also need to face the wrath of Voice readers.

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