The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Must it take so long?

Please intervene here. I had bought a phone at a furniture store in Selebi Phikwe and enrolled on insurance. I was mugged on May 26 and filled a claim form with the store for replacement. I was told to wait 3 days to 3 weeks maximum. After 4 weeks I started calling the store at my expense with no satisfactory response even from the supervisors. Please assist.

Firstly I'm glad you had insurance cover for the phone. When you buy something on hire purchase the deal often includes an insurance policy that covers the item you're buying against theft or damage. However, it's important to note that these policies often protect the store more than they do the consumer and the cost of this insurance is often incredibly high, much higher than an insurance policy you could've got yourself. It's incredibly important, if you can afford it, to get a basic home contents insurance policy. This will cover all of your belongings in the case of a disaster and not just one item such as a cellphone.

Insurance claims do sometimes take a while to be processed and it depends very much on the details of the claim, what was lost, and the circumstances of the loss. The insurance company has to double check everything to make sure the claim is legitimate before they can pay out. That's why I suspect they told you it could be between three days and three weeks. However, in your case, it's taken more than four weeks and that's excessive. I emailed the store and they contacted the insurance company and they told me they were missing the police case number from your claim. However, when I contacted you, you told me you'd long given them this. Maybe they should read the claim forms more carefully in future? Also, haven't they heard of cell phones? They could and should have called you if something was missing. They shouldn't wait for me to contact them before they told you this.

If this takes much longer I'll remind them that Section 14 of the Consumer Protection Act says that when a supplier performs:

"any services for or on behalf of a consumer, the consumer has a right to … timely performance and completion of those services (and) timely notice of any unavoidable delay". 

In simple terms, they should pick up the phone and call you to reassure you that things are happening. It's the legal and polite thing to do.

Where's my refund?

I need your advice about my issue with a tracking company. On Wednesday I paid a tracking company to track my laptop and paid them P900 the same day. Before the end of the day my laptop was returned back to me by a stranger. I notified the tracking company the same time that I found my laptop and they promised to return P600 of the amount I sent which we agreed. Now to date they are not responding, they even blocked my numbers.

Please advise on how best you can assist?

I'm very suspicious about many of these companies that claim to be able to track stolen or lost devices. Many modern cellphones and laptops have built-in tracking features that allow us to locate them very precisely if they're switched on. Whenever we buy such a device it's very important that we switch on these features in case we later have a problem.

However, I suspect some of them are using a different approach which, I suspect in many cases, is illegal. This company is more complicated. I checked their registration with CIPA and the company was deregistered late in 2023. Something even more suspicious is that on their Facebook page they've posted several pictures of cellphone thieves they claimed to recently help catch. A quick search showed that these pictures were all from Nigerian news sites from a few years ago.

I contacted them about your refund and it was quickly processed. However, when I asked them about their company registration and the photos they became very defensive and argumentative. Do you think they have a guilty conscience?