Tuesday, 11 February 2025

Consumer Watchdog under threat from Facebook

FOR RELEASE

Consumer Watchdog under threat from Facebook


Consumer Watchdog Botswana, who operate a Facebook group with over 230,000 members is currently under threat from Facebook itself. Richard Harriman, one of the administrators of the group, has twice recently had his Facebook profile suspended after publishing a public warning about a scam. Facebook has also warned that the Consumer Watchdog group itself is "at risk of being disabled".

In what is a major failing of the measures designed to protect Facebook users against scams, the post was seen as promoting the scam, despite being a warning entitled "Scam Alert".

Harriman said:
"I think Facebook need to look very carefully at how they protect their users against abuse. We work very hard to warn consumers in Botswana about scams and have been threatened many times by the crooks running them for exposing their crimes. Scams like Ecoplexus were successfully stopped following these warnings and I worry that more scammers will be able to steal from their victims without these alerts. Instead of stopping us protecting consumers, Facebook should help us."
Consumer Watchdog is a fiercely independent consumer support, education and advocacy group and everything it does for consumers is entirely free.

Sunday, 9 February 2025

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

They're still charging me!

Please kindly assist me with the matter of a cash loan. I took a 2 years loan from them on December 2022. The cut off date was last year November but they deducted in December. I logged in a complaint for my refund on the 18 December but till today they are not willing to assist with the refund.

They are saying their laptop is water damaged and until laptop is fixed that's when they can help me. The cash loan was recruited by our company and payment was made from work by HR. Our HR department said the cash loan has to pay me back for the refund.

So now they are not willing to assist with my refund.. um keeping on calling them.. only excuses after another. Is there anywhere I can report this matter for my refund of P1,533.71?


This is completely unacceptable. Firstly, you paid off the loan in full and they need to stop taking your money. It's not complicated. I'm also not impressed by your HR Department. Don't they realize that it's their job to ensure that the company workforce is fully motivated to do their work? If the microlender they invited into the company is misbehaving, they need to start doing their job and help fix this.

However, what's more concerning is the microlender and their pathetic excuses. Their laptop is water damaged? Is it possible they only have a single laptop? And no backup facility? No disaster recovery plan? No money to buy another laptop? They can't be trusted.

Actually this isn't surprising. Although the microlending company is still registered with CIPA, they are not on the list of regulated lenders held by NBFIRA. I contacted them and they made some excuses about the renewal of their licence and said they are entitled only to recover existing debts and not create new ones. They assured me that you'll be refunded very soon.

Is it worth it?

Hello Mr Harriman. Yesterday I bought a certain Forex booklet from someone for P300. However upon reading it I realised I wasn't satisfied with the information that it contained, more so I was expecting something different. I have a similar one I downloaded from Google. So I told him and asked for a refund of which he is refusing do give. I'm I wrong or right to ask for a refund because I'm not satisfied?


There's a lesson here for all of us. This is how many forex gurus and Get Rich Quick peddlers make money. They start by offering "education" and "training" on their particular money-making scheme, often in the form of electronic booklets like the ones you bought. However, your experience is a common one. The material many of them offer is either freely available on the internet somewhere, incredibly basic or both.

These days it's even easier. As an experiment, I asked my preferred AI tool to generate a forex guide and less than a minute later, I had a booklet better than the one you paid money for. All for free.

The lesson is simple. Anyone who invites you to join their money-making scheme wants to make money FROM you, not WITH you.

Saturday, 1 February 2025

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Is it legit?

Can you please check for me if a company called Tigris Capital UK is indeed legit. I heard from a friend who is selling me the idea that those are financial funders. They are investor who are willing to invest in Africa, that they are willing to invest millions to a billion dollars. I can send you documents for you to see.


I'm very glad you contacted me before you went any further with this. It's a scam. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

The first clue is that this is not how lending works. Lenders from foreign countries don't give billions, millions or anything to total strangers in foreign countries. It's hard enough getting a loan from a local bank so it's unbelievable that a company in another country will lend you so much money.

The second clue can be found in the material they sent you. This included South African company registration documents, BEE certificates, industry regulator compliance documents, copies of passports and even bank confirmation letters. These very convincing documents might have been persuasive if they'd been for the right company. Instead of "Tigris Capital UK", they were for a South African company with a totally different name. I suspect these are all genuine documents but for an innocent company with no connection to this scam.

However, the biggest clue was in the contract from "Tigris Capital" you were sent. Alongside lots of fancy contractual terms was this: "2.7 Facilitation Fee: A total facilitation fee of (6%) will be payable by the Borrower on disbursement of the loan."

That's what this is all about. As soon as you've agreed to accept the loan, YOU have to pay THEM a lot of money. That is the payment that gives this scam its name: an "advance fee scam".

Please spread the word to everyone you know so they, like you, can avoid this and similar scams.

Where's my refund?

Last week Saturday I bought a headboard at a furniture store and paid P7100 cash. They told me that they will deliver it on Sunday the following day. I waited for them the whole day on Sunday and they didn't deliver it. On Monday they told me that they don't have that headboard in stock even at the warehouse so they had to refund me. I've been calling them the whole week for my refund and they are telling me that they are still trying to raise my money because they don't have any cash.


This is ridiculous. This is a major chain of furniture stores who claim they don't have any money? And why do they even need to pay you in cash? If they had any sense they'd get your bank account details and they could refund you in a moment. That's surely the simplest solution?

I contacted senior management at their Head Office and alerted them.

Update: They contacted the customer and promised to refund them the next day.