Saturday 4 March 2017

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Is Pipcoin legit?

I am looking too invest in forex trading and I checked out a dude by the name of Ref Wayne and his company that sells pip coins that you invest in. As u know, Forex exchange is a bit risky and tricky investment but pays out. Ref Wayne and his company promises a number of good thing, which is also suspicious.

I therefore ask if their trade is legit or if u know any other company that is legit and better than Ref Wayne's company. 


We mentioned Pipcoin a few times last year, warning people not to get involved.

Pipcoin’s web site describes it as “Africa’s first P2P Cryptocurrency” and they’re doing their very best to make it sound like they’re something like Bitcoin which genuinely is a currency, but not like one you and I have ever seen before. Bitcoin is entirely online, it’s not a currency that has notes and coins, it’s all virtual, stored in a ledger distributed around the world. But Pipcoin isn’t anything like this, in fact it’s nothing more than a scam. When I first encountered Pipcoin last year they were promising returns of 35% per month and I’m sure you know that there is no investment anywhere that can offer anything like that. A typical investment might get you a few percent every year. More recently I even found one claim on Facebook that Pipcoin experienced “over 99% growth in 24 hours”. That’s just silly.

The guy you mention, Ref Wayne is really Refilwe Nkele who, according to News24 in South Africa, has a long history of supposedly teaching people how to trade Forex and has made a lot of money from referring people to Forex brokers. Not content with making a lot of money he clearly wants to make a lot more by inventing a fake currency that covers up what is clearly either a pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

Please don’t waste your time on this scam. I also urge you to be very careful if you decide to venture into forex trading. Remember that Forex trading is competitive and you’ll be competing against the industry experts employed by banks, investment companies and people with advanced qualifications and decades of experience. Can you really win that battle?

Must he pay?

This is about my father and his bank in Maun. Its like someone used his account in South Africa last December and now it has an overdraft and now they’re making him to pay the money. All I gathered is he has a credit card with them. He discovered the instalment was high, and when he inquired why they said he used it in South Africa. He told them he doesn’t even have a passport. They said they will open a case but they never gave him a reference and in the mean time they insist he clear the P5,000 taken. His account is in negative and they take whatever being deposited.


I think the fact that your father doesn’t even have a passport is a good indication that he didn’t personally use his card but that might not be good enough for the bank. In this sort of situation the bank will likely say that your father could have given his card to a friend or relative and they used it in SA. We’ve probably all done that occasionally, haven’t we? But that doesn’t mean it’s something I advise. On the contrary, you immediately breach the agreement you signed with your bank when you do that.

However you are entitled to know what’s happening. The bank should be able to tell you where exactly the money was withdrawn and their security cameras can give some clue about who used the card. You’re entitled to that at least. Meanwhile we’ll contact the bank and see what they advise.

Update

The reader contacted us saying that after we contacted the bank they called her father. It seems that someone called her father last year pretending to be from the bank and asked for all his card details. They’d presumably already cloned his card at an ATM in Botswana and he then gave them his PIN over the phone. The bad news is that the bank isn’t liable, they’ve not done anything wrong so he’ll have to pay the price.

The lesson is a simple one. Don’t ever give away your personal or banking details to anyone who calls you. No matter how official they sound, never give away any personal facts to a stranger.

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