Friday 6 May 2016

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Where’s my prize?

Kindly assist me. I have won an all expense paid trip to Kasane for two from a company since last year September. To this day I am still trying to redeem the price. I am being tossed around and am fed up with the attitude of people in that office. I have on numerous occasions contacted the manager who is not returning my calls now.

Please assist. All I did was win a trip fair and square and would like to take it up before winter. I was also made to pay P 400 towards this which I still have no explanation as to what it was for. I understand I am not the only person who has paid or battling to get my prize.

Thank you once more.


Some people might think that because this was a prize you won in a competition that you aren’t a consumer and you don’t have any rights. I disagree. It doesn’t matter whether you paid for something or not, this company said you had won something and you have a right to expect them to keep their word.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of companies neglecting to honor their obligations to competition winners. Once he excitement has worn off, they seem to forget the winner and the promises they made them.

We’ll get in touch with the company and remind them of what they need to do. Hopefully this might have some effect. We’ll also find out why you had to pay someone to get your prize. That is NOT how these things are meant to work. A prize should be free, not something you have to pay to get.

Where’s my laptop?

I need help guys. I bought a laptop for cash on the 23rd of March. I noticed a tiny dot on the screen but thought it was worth ignoring. Turns out dots on screens grow big and even turn into lines across the screen. Anyway, I took the laptop back on the 8th of April. The gentleman who assisted me told me to check with them in two to three weeks. I actually waited for three weeks, when I got there at around 13:00 hrs, the same gentleman told me that the laptop was not ready. I made him aware that I urgently needed the laptop and suggested that they loan me a laptop in the meantime. His response was that he would call the repairs people to see how far the laptop was, and he assured to call me after lunch with a solution. He never called so I went back after 17:00 hrs, and I still left there without a laptop, yet they have my money. Now my question is, what is the quickest way to have a laptop because I really need one? Do I ask them to give my money back, and is that possible? What do I do?


I think you’ve been patient enough. Clearly your laptop screen is faulty but there’s no reason for it to take this long to fix that sort of problem. I know of companies who can replace laptop screens in a day for a reasonable price so I can’t understand why this store has taken nearly a month. Of course they probably have lots of customers to deal with but that doesn’t change a thing. You have a right to a prompt solution to your problem.

If you speak to them I suggest that you remind them that Section 15 (1) (a) of the Consumer Protection Regulations 2001 requires a supplier to offer services (such as a repair) “with reasonable care and skill”. In this case I don’t think they’re being particularly careful or very skillful.

This needs to change.

We’ll contact the store in question and explain this to them as well. We’ll explain that if they fail to offer you either a repaired laptop or a replacement as soon as possible then they’ll have to consider a full refund. I doubt they want to do that.

I hope you had a backup of the data on the laptop? Everyone should consider buying an external drive whenever they buy a laptop. Either that or start backing up your files to a Cloud storage service. It’s incredibly important.

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