A liar or a fool?

Or maybe just someone who’s been misinformed.

Those are the only three possible explanations when someone tells you something that’s not true. They’re deliberately lying, they’re foolishly talking on a subject about which they know little or nothing or they’ve just repeating a falsehood that someone else told them.

The nature of working with consumer rights is that we encounter all of these groups. A few consumers who come to us with a complaint sometimes turn out to have lied to us to get our support, sometimes they’ve even lied to themselves as well. Others can politely be called naïve, perhaps ignorant and that’s what gets them into trouble. The last group are the ones who lack scepticism, not questioning anything they hear.

So what do you think about this person?

A few days ago we were contacted by someone on Facebook who told us that they’d been approached by people representing the Holiday Club, a South African-based timeshare scheme. They asked if he was interested in joining the scheme.

Before continuing, you deserve some history about the “relationship” between Consumer Watchdog and The Holiday Club.

It started in 2007 when we commented on the contract people who join the Holiday Club were asked to sign. This contract was “Irrevocable” and what this meant, in theory and in practice, was that once their pitiably short cooling off period expired, you couldn’t change your mind without their permission. You were with them for life. For ever.

We didn’t think that was reasonable. Neither did the attorneys we spoke to. All other contracts either expire or can be terminated somehow. You can get out of a tenancy agreement, a banking agreement, even a marriage but you couldn’t leave the Holiday Club unless they were feeling generous towards you. We thought that was unreasonable.

We mentioned this in Mmegi and also on the radio and The Holiday Club weren’t at all happy about us talking about them. Their attorney wrote us a series of letters threatening us with hellfire and damnation if we didn’t retract what we’d said, apologise and beg forgiveness from them. I won’t bore you with the details of each of the letters but rest assured, we didn’t do any of those things because we’d done nothing wrong, we’d just reported what we felt was an unreasonable way of doing business. Ten years later we haven’t changed our minds.

So why am I mentioning this again, after all this time? The person who they approached and who then contacted us is a skeptic. He’s not easily persuaded by people trying to sell him things. He’s the type who’ll say things like “Is there any evidence for that?” or “Really? Can you prove that?”

When the person claiming to represent The Holiday Club got in touch he was his normal skeptical self. He told the rep that he’d heard that it was cheaper to get holidays in other ways and that he couldn’t see any advantage in paying to join a scheme that demanded he pay an enormous joining fee and then money every year regardless of whether he ever used the facilities they offered. He also mentioned the lifetime contract issue. The response the representative gave was remarkable:

“When u join this club, ALL these things are explained to you. Cancelations cannot be done yes, because of obvious reasons that you have wasted business time. U are told thoroughly about this… Everyone is out there to make money! U cannot waste peoples time making appointments n not keeping to them! U have to be well organized in life no matter where you go”.

So let me get this straight. According to this person, it’s inconvenient for them to meet potential recruits and then go through the process of signing them up. So they ask you to join a scheme you can never leave. Do you think that’s normal? How would you react if a bank told you that if you opened an account you could never close it? What if a filling station told you that once you filled your tank you’d be obliged to use that station for the rest of your life? What if a landlord asked you to sign a lease that would never end?

You’d just laugh at them, wouldn’t you? Please tell me you would?

But that’s not the most remarkable thing this Holiday Club representative said. This is what she said next:

“U will be shocked to realize that the Consumer Watchdog staff is one of our biggest corporate clients! No kidding”.

I should quickly admit something. She didn’t say “kidding”, she said something else, something rude that rhymes with “hitting”. But it means the same thing.

You can imagine our surprise. And then our amusement. And then our hysterical laughter. A representative of the company that once threatened to sue us for defamation because we discussed what we felt were their unreasonable contract terms is now going around telling potential recruits that we’re now one of their “biggest corporate clients”?

That’s a lie.

Or a foolish mistake. Or maybe she’s just been misled. Maybe someone else in The Holiday Club told her that. Why else would she be saying it?

The lesson is about trust. If someone important tells you something then you should probably consider believing them. If your boss or a colleague tells you that Consumer Watchdog is one of your company’s biggest clients, and you pass on that information to a prospective customer you’re not lying, you’re not an idiot, you’re just someone who’s been misinformed. It’s not your fault. Yes, some might say you should have been a bit more skeptical but the worst accusation they can really make is that you were either naive or too trusting. Either way you know in future not to trust your boss as much and to check out anything he or she says in future before spreading it around. I suspect the woman selling The Holiday Club will be in a difficult position when she reads this. She’ll know she was either lying, foolish or was herself the victim of someone else’s lie, foolishness or incorrect information.

And finally, a message to our friends at The Holiday Club. In the spirit of our last encounter, please stop spreading this untruth. We have a reputation to protect, one we’re very proud of. A reputation for not being liars or fools.

Too good to be true

Some things are too good to be true.

Sometimes it’s obvious. The orphaned daughter of the West African millionaire stranded in a refugee camp who now wants to share her inheritance with you? Too good to be true.

The job in a far-flung country with the extraordinary salary and amazing conditions that you didn’t actually apply for and for which you haven’t been formally interviewed? Also too good to be true.

The charming person you met on Facebook who now say they love you and has sent you a package containing a variety of valuable goodies but which is now held in customs in a foreign country and can only be released when you pay them some money? Too good to be true.

The offshore investment scheme that offers you returns of nearly 3% every day? WAY too good to be true.

The foreign exchange web site that offers to multiply your “investment” by up to 200 times so you can make fortunes, despite you not being a trained and experienced Forex dealer? That’s something else that’s too good to be true.

Those last two are in fact particularly dangerous. Eurextrade ruined many people in Botswana with its promises of fabulous profits and hid well the fact that it was a Ponzi scheme run by international gangsters. The Forex trading issue also has the potential to ruin you as well. A reader contacted us recently asking about one particular web site that will multiply (“leverage” is the technical term) your investment by up to 200 times, effectively giving you millions of Pula to trade with. What they neglect to tell their customers is that it works both ways. Yes, if you can correctly predict the fluctuations in the exchange rates between currencies you might make some money. They conveniently forget to tell you that is also means you can lose your entire “investment” in moments if the exchange rates go the other way. Within minutes of searching online I found stories of people who had lost over half a million Pula in an instant trading Forex.

Pyramid schemes like WorldVentures are also too good to be true. While they promise fantastic holidays in exotic places they often aren’t entirely clear that none of this is actually for free. You have to pay to join the pyramid and then all you get are discounted holidays. You still have to buy the holidays, just at a slightly cheaper price.

Of course what pyramid schemes really sell is the promise of income from recruiting multiple layers of people beneath you, each of whom pays to join and then starts a flow of money up the pyramid, some of which stays with you as it passes by. Of course this rarely happens because it’s almost impossible to recruit the number of people you need to achieve the targets the scheme sets you. The figures produced by WorldVentures prove this. More than three quarters of all recruits never make a single thebe. Of those who do make some money, more than 80% make less than P100 each month and that’s income, not profit.

Consider this. 84% of all the money flowing through WorldVentures is taken by the top 0.8%. Pyramid schemes (and their cousins, Multi-Level Marketing schemes) are too good to be true.

Then there’s holiday clubs. They sell the idea of fantastic discounts on flights, hotel stays and accommodation but the truth isn’t quite as good. Firstly, there’s the major flaw in all these schemes. You have to pay a membership fee to join before you get the discounts. Why would you want to do this when almost all hotel chains offer discounts for free? I have never paid the full rate in a South African hotel. Not once. Hotel chains offer similar discounts entirely for free depending on the days you want to stay with them.

Then there are the points-based timeshare holiday clubs that offer you the chance to stay at a variety of locations for free, subject to the number of points you’ve bought and so long as you’ve paid their annual fees. These also have their problems. Some, such as The Holiday Club and Flexiclub are constantly being criticized for their contracts which customers sometimes find almost impossible to cancel if they change their minds. The Holiday Club used to have a clause in their contract stating that the customer had made an “irrevocable offer” to join the club, one that seemed almost impossible to cancel. You were effectively a member for life.

I’ve had a look at the newer version of the Holiday Club terms and conditions and I think they must have learned some lessons. Firstly you have the five-day “cooling off” period that South African law requires (Botswana legislators, are you reading this?). Secondly the “irrevocable offer” clause has disappeared and instead there’s a section entitled “Cessation of Membership”. This is what it says:

“A Member shall cease to be such when he ceases to be the registered holder of Point Rights / Shares in terms of the issue to him of a Point Rights / Share Certificate.”

So you can cancel your membership when you sell your points. But that’s the issue. It’s sometimes impossible to find anyone who’ll buy them. You can’t just walk away. You don’t have the right to tell them that you’ve had enough, you’ll pay your year’s fees and you’ll walk away from the deal. You can only do this with their permission, something that can be hard to get.

We first wrote about The Holiday Club way back in 2007, exposing their “irrevocable offer” issue and that clearly angered them because within days we had silly legal threats from their attorneys. Clearly we had touched a raw nerve. I just hope that consumers these days have a better understanding of their rights and the sort of contract they should never sign. Like many other things these offers can be way too good to be true.

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Is this a real job?

I have been communication with a company in London called Active Event Company (Edward Jones) that has stated that they have employed me as their Travel Event Manager for £4,900 per month and have directed me to another agent to process work permit and visa.

Active Event Company, Argonaut House, Galleymead Road, Colnbrook, Berkshire, SL3 0EN United Kingdom.
Tel: +447031965524
Private Email:mredwardjones0@gmail.com
Email:eventactiveplanning@yahoo.co.uk

I could not locate this company on my own and that's why I request your assistance. Besides I have also gone through unnecessary exchange of emails requesting that I be supplied with banking details to send GBP695. After various exchange of emails they forwarded me the address for the agent for the visa and work permit represented by Beavis Hughe of the UK Immigration Service.

This is certainly a scam, there’s no doubt about it. There are various clues. To begin with the phone number they give for the company is a UK-based cellphone number. The code for the UK is +44 and the next digit is a ‘7’, the first digit of all UK cellphones. Also look at the email addresses they give. They’re both free addresses. Don’t you think a company would have its own domain? Don’t you think a real company would have a landline number?

Then there’s the salary. A monthly salary £4,900 per month is almost P900,000 per year. That’s not the sort of salary a company offers to total strangers. And you are a total stranger to them, aren’t you? They never interviewed you, they never even met you. Real companies don’t offer salaries like this to people they’ve never interviewed.

Most importantly this simply isn’t how companies recruit their staff. When a company recruits a foreigner THEY pay all the costs. They are the ones who pay for airfares, visas and relocation, not the person who is being recruited.

Whatever you do please don’t send them any money, you’ll never see it again.

Is this a real company?

I wanted to find out if it is possible to find out if “Leisure Live Travel Club” is real and not a scam. I recently signed up with them after their too good to be true presentation for membership while I was on a holiday in Durban this past Easter holiday. I paid R500 for registration in order to secure my Easter special deal and awaiting to pay a deposit of close to R4200.

Please help me because the deal sounds too good and tempting and I wanted to know if am making a mistake or not.

I am very suspicious of ALL holiday clubs and this company sounds no different. The biggest issue is that the so-called special offers they present are often no different to the discounts you can get from hotel chains FOR FREE. For instance if you go to www.bid2stay.co.za you can sometimes get huge discounts from the City Lodge Hotels group. The same goes for the Sun International chain, they often have special offers. Neither of these groups charge you any form of membership fee to get these discounts.

The other problem is that they often commit you to very long contracts that they refuse to let you cancel.

As you can imagine my advice would be to seriously consider whether you want that sort of commitment!

Update: The reader sent over a copy of the membership agreement he signed and he was in luck. The South African National Credit Act allows consumers to “rescind” such agreements within 5 business days and he contacted us on day 3. I advised him to get a letter to them as quickly as possible to get out of this agreement. Luckily they don’t have any choice but to accept his decision.

Holiday Club - First Issues program on BTv

Last week's First Issues program from BTv on Holiday Clubs.

Holiday club complaints on HelloPeter.com

It's amazing how many complaints are posted to the Hello Peter web site in South Africa regarding holiday club timeshare schemes. The most common complaints seems to be misrepresentations in the initial presentations, the lack of available holidays and the difficulty you have in escaping their clutches.

See these links for examples.
Holiday Access
Flexi Club
Holiday Club

Holiday clubbed?

I’m on holiday as I write this. Away from home for a few days, enjoying the silence of the bush, enhanced only by the sound of kids playing and the occasional cork being removed from a bottle of wine.

But not everyone has such a positive experience on holiday. In fact some holiday ideas can turn out to be nightmares.

We’ve reported several times in the past on various holiday club schemes that have plagued consumers, causing them emotional trauma and significant financial hardship.

Most holiday clubs are effectively mobile timeshare schemes. You buy points that you can later spend on holidays at the locations they offer. Superficially this is a perfectly acceptable concept. There’s nothing wrong, in principle, with a timeshare concept. It’s just a shame that almost always it turns out to be oversold, a con or a scam.

The information timeshare salespeople provide is full of pictures of glamorous locations, sandy beaches and glorious sunsets being watched by happy, beautiful people. It’s very seductive. Very often you’ll meet the salespeople when you’re already on holiday in the place of your dreams, knowing in the back of your mind how expensive it all is. You’ll be sitting there with a fancy cool drink with a little umbrella with your loved one, fantasising about spending more time in such a beautiful place. That’s then the creepy salesman creeps out from beneath his creepy rock.

How would you like to come here more often he’ll ask? All you need do is sign up for our scheme and pay a simple annual fee you can choose from a range of beautiful places like this and come as often as you choose. After another of those fancy drinks you’re in a presentation surrounded by other happy smiling people who all want a bit of the holiday action as well. Before you know it you’ve signed on the dotted line and they’ve got you.

That’s when the victims often begin to realise that they’ve been suckered.

Where to start?

To begin with these holiday club schemes are based on a false premise. They’re not a cheap way of taking a holiday. When we’ve actually looked at the details we’ve almost always found that they’re no cheaper than going to your friendly local travel agents and asking what last-minute specials they have on offer. You’d be surprised at the bargains they’ll offer at the last minute. They’re certainly cheaper than the financial commitment demanded by holiday clubs.

Even the initial sales job is often deceptive. I’ve heard of cases when everyone else in that presentation was in the pay of the timeshare scheme, just there to help catch one victim. They certainly make enough money to pay everyone some commission.

Even the holidays they actually offer you are disappointing. Very often the locations you want aren’t available at the times you need. Public and school holidays are either not available, require you to spend more points than other times of the year or they’re simply booked way ahead of schedule by other people. There was a case in the USA that finally reached the courts some years ago when it emerged that all the prime slots in the calendar were reserved as bonuses for the sales team. The victims, sorry, members never stood a chance of getting them.

Then there are the contracts you sign with these schemes. A few years ago we received a series of silly legal threats from The Holiday Club promising us legal action when we reported on their “irrevocable” contracts. These contracts, the victims were told, were for life. There was no way to cancel them, not once a 5-day “cooling off” period had expired. Of course a 5-day opportunity to change your mind is next to useless. That 5-day period almost certainly expires before you get home and let reality sink in. I saw one contract that required any change of mind to be submitted, in writing, to an address in KwaZulu Natal within the 5-day period. Effectively the cooling off period was impossible to use.

Even when customers wanted to cancel their membership at a later date and even when they were prepared to waive the membership fees they had paid, all the annual fees and the points they earned, they were told they could only cancel the contract with the permission of the Club. Needless to say this permission was remarkably slow to arrive.

Of course the threats we received came to nothing because we’d only reported the facts. Yet again bullying tactics didn’t work.

Since then we’ve reported on a variety of similar schemes but the problems were often the same. Just last week we heard from a reader who had a problem with a company called Holiday Access. It began with problem actually paying them but when things became so complicated and he decided to cancel his membership he was apparently told that he’d signed a 3-year contract and there was no way to cancel it. He was warned that if he stopped paying they’d set their lawyers on him. This is despite him having had absolutely no benefit from the scheme since he joined.

I think it’s simple. The benefits of these clubs are either non-existent or marginal. The contractual conditions are often incredibly one-sided and exploitative. The costs are often excessive. Why would you want to burden yourself with such an obligation?

If you want a decent holiday I think the last thing you want is a holiday timeshare scheme.

This week’s stars

• Korabo at Orange at the Bus Rank in Gaborone who our reader says is a “shining star who went above and beyond the call of duty to keep me as a customer”.

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice #1

[These are the highlights of a very long email we received.]

I bought a bed at a furniture store in Molepolole in 2010 October. After 3 weeks when I was asleep the bed made a funny noise when I turned and it sinks in the middle. Everyday I wake up I am tired with backaches because I have to sleep in the middle and it is sunken.

I reported the problem to the shop before December and they promised to exchange it. Even though I have paid for delivery initially they expected me to transport the two beds for myself (the one from my house and the exchange one). We discussed the issue but later the manager promised to deliver for me but only after a week as their delivering van is elsewhere. Weeks passed with no delivery. In December I called them I asked them to let me transport the bed for myself and the manager agreed but she later called me to tell me that their boss has ordered them to wait and not let me transport it for myself as she will be coming the following Monday.

On the Christmas week I called them reminding them that I am still waiting and to my surprise they told me that they aren’t offering exchanges as they have limited stock.

[This is where the email gets very long. The store gave her a range of excuses about having no stock, the manager explaining that so many beds have “gone wrong” that they don’t have any replacements.]

In April I learnt from a friend who also has the same problem that the shop is now closed and it’s advertised for rent. She told me she called the manager and she told her that they have closed the Molepolole branch and only left with Gaborone and Kanye branches. I tried to call the manager but didn’t pick the phone.

I called the store owner and we had a long chat and she explained her problems with suppliers, the shortage of replacement beds she was facing and also that she had tried to fix the problem on several occasions but that there had been some communication problems between them and the customer.

I suggested that she and the customer have a quick chat on the phone and within minutes I was receiving messages saying the problem has been resolved, a new bed will be with her the following day.

The lesson is that sometimes communications break down, misunderstandings develop and then people become angry. That’s when it’s sometimes useful to turn to us as a neutral outsider. Despite what people often think we don’t always take sides. Although I sometimes love a good fight I much prefer it when a consumer and a supplier sort out a problem on good terms.

Holiday club woes

We’ve heard from another consumer who has had problems with holiday clubs. This time it’s another South African one calling itself Holiday Access. He says:

“Last year May I went for a conference in Durban where I was approached by the Holiday Access Sales Agents (I think). Because I had always wanted to sign up for a holiday club package I went to listen to the Holiday Access presentation and I was quite impressed with it. To that effect, I signed up for a 3 year membership package amounting to R6,500. I then made an initial payment of R1,000 through swiping a debit card. From then I signed a debit order of R229 for the next 24 months.”

That’s when it started to go wrong. To begin with there were endless problems trying to set up a direct debit across the border. He started to pay them the fees in cash over the counter but that incurred enormous additional bank charges. Eventually he decided that enough was enough and he wanted out. That’s when they insisted he had signed a 3-year contract and that there was no way out of it. He says that the last person at Holiday Access he spoke to said that:

“if I terminate she will have to hand over the process to her bosses who will hand over to their lawyers to take legal action against me.”

We’ve heard of this so often with holiday clubs and it seems like this bunch are no different to the others. They trap you in to a contract they claim you can’t escape and they really, really want your money.

So what’s our advice regarding holiday clubs?

Steer clear of them. They’re not even a very good way of taking holidays. They give you little flexibility, there are huge restrictions on when you can go on holiday, where you can go and, most importantly, they only provide accommodation. They don’t pay for your transport, food, drink or entertainment. You are much better off going to your local travel agent and finding what amazing special deals they have on offer.

If you do a quick search of other consumer web sites (Holiday Access, Flexi Club, Holiday Club) you’ll see that we’re not the only ones warning people about holiday clubs. If you fancy some amusement you can also see some of the threatening letters we got last time as well as our very polite letters back to them suggesting where they could stick their silly threats.

Don't use email

Yes, I mean it.

Sometimes email is the VERY worst means of communication. Of course it’s fine for most purposes, for inviting people to meetings, for telling your boss or your tutor you’ll have your assignment in on time, for sending pictures of your kids to your distant relatives but it’s also a tool that can be extremely dangerous.

The problem is that unlike a face-to-face meeting and on the phone, you have no clues about how someone FEELS when you read or write an email. When someone is standing in front of you or you can hear their voice there are hundreds of little clues you can pick up on to tell if they’re happy, sad, pretending to be happy but really sad, depressed and putting on a brave face, any of the thousand emotions we can show. Just as dogs can smell things with exceptional acuteness we great apes are masterful at reading expressions. But only when we can see or hear the other person. That’s not possible with email.

A reader got in touch recently to tell us about a problem she’d experienced with roof trusses. Not the most exciting of subjects I know but the email correspondence she had with the supplier certainly was thrilling to read. It was a classic example of rudeness escalation.

She started with some rather forthright comments about his company’s “dishonesty and lack of professionalism” and asked for the problems to be resolved urgently. The first email from the supplier was actually very restrained and promised to get to the bottom of the situation.

Then it got serious. Two days later he emailed her saying:

“Your carpenter is lying about all those things he has been telling you. Your carpenter is the one who does not know how to put up trusses ans its your fault because you are the one who employed an incompetent person who is taking chances with your roof (…) But please do not insult the credibility of my company because professional people do not do that.”

She then accused him of being unprofessional again and of being arrogant so he accused various people of lying, being incompetent and suggested she was trying to intimidate him. He also wrote the hilarious line: “Problems can not disappear by sweeping them under the carpenter.”

My point is that things wouldn’t have gone so far and become so inflamed if these conversations had taken place over the phone, or better still face-to-face over a cup of tea. The nature of email makes it much more likely for tempers to flare.

Very sensibly the reader decided not to make things worse. She told us “I’m actually very angry at this moment and have decided against replying his e-mail”. A very wise move. This is the time to put the kettle on and chill out.

That’s perhaps another of those Consumer Watchdog conflict resolution tips. Put the kettle on, make a pot of tea and chill out before answering an angry email. I did that recently, for 4 days in fact. One of the emails in the long-running Hyundai Rustenburg story pissed me off SO much I decided it would be best if I had a tea-drinking marathon instead. Eventually I calmed down and was able to show some restraint in my response to this incompetent, discourteous, disrespectful and utterly horrible dealership. The ones who might be doing the same to us now. They no longer reply to our emails.

It’s not exactly comparable but a few years ago we had an argument by fax with the Holiday Club, technically a company called Suntide, about the nature of their lifetime contracts, the ones that need special dispensation from the Pope or the Secretary General of the United Nations to cancel. That also got rather out of hand, with the faxes from their lawyer getting longer and longer and, no doubt, increasingly expensive. Eventually, we all decided to get together face-to-face for a cuppa to talk it through. Suddenly things became a lot more civil. Nobody threatened anyone, we were all grown ups and we parted no further forward but at least they saved some money in legal fees.

But it’s more than just anger management that email undermines. It’s spelling. No matter how carefully I proof-read these articles I write for Mmegi, I have learned to print them first before sending them in. I find a spelling or grammatical mistake every single time in the printed version that I hadn’t seen on screen. How professional do you think it looks if you send a business email that contains mistakes?

Finally there’s all the silliness email inspires. Many companies these days put mandatory disclaimers at the bottom of all company emails. Some of them are fairly sensible, saying for instance that anything written in an email won’t ever constitute a legally binding contract. Fair enough. However others go a bit mental.

One company I know doesn’t even publish the disclaimer in the email. Instead it gives a link to a web site which says that the email:

“is meant solely for the intended recipient. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted in reliance on this, is prohibited and may be unlawful.”

What utter crap. If this is to be believed, if they send you an email and you forward it to me then I’m a criminal? Let me make it perfectly plain to anyone reading this who might be tempted to email me. Once it’s in my computer it’s MINE, OK? I can print it, delete it, publish it, make love to it, I can do anything I want to it because it now belongs to me.

If you have anything to say then please email me. Just check your spelling first.

The Voice - Consumer's Voice

We’ve had a number of complaints recently, with virtually nothing to connect them other than in each case there is a consumer who feels aggrieved and wants help. However not all of these consumers are in the same position. Some, you might think, have been naïve. Judge for yourself.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #1

Recently my company approached Supa Cars and looked at their bakkies specifically the Heifa loda. I liked what I saw and decided to buy the vehicle on Friday 29th May. I sent one of my directors and another member of staff to have a look at the vehicle and they also liked what they saw and chose a silver model after consulting me. They negotiated a P1,000 discount and then handed over a cheque with instruction to proceed with the sale.

However on Sunday 31st May I bought the Car magazine and saw an advert with the same type of vehicle, a Hafei Loda, being sold in Johannesburg for R55,000, about P48,000, which is P22,000 cheaper.

On Monday morning at 8:15am we called Supa Cars to cancel the purchase but were told that everybody is in a meeting, we finally got through at 9:30am and conveyed the message to cancel. I then went there at 10:15am to convey this message personally.

Supa Cars told me there was nothing he could do as the vehicle belongs to a finance company and they will decide whether to cancel or not. I called the finance company who told me that they finance vehicles and don’t sell them. I’ve since called Supa Cars on several occasions since then and their position is that there will be no refund.

What can I do?

I’m not sure there is much you can do. You did, after all, make a formal offer to buy the car at the price they asked, after your colleagues had negotiated the discount and you paid them the money. If you really wanted to play dirty you could perhaps have called your bank and stopped the cheque but that’s probably too late by now.

If the company selling the car were feeling generous you might have been able to persuade them to cancel the sale but I suspect they are rubbing their hands in glee at getting a nice profit from the car.

The lesson is to do your homework BEFORE you make an offer to buy a car. There’s a Shopper’s Guide to buying cars on our web site which might help.

Dear Consumer’s Voice #2

I read a recent Consumer Watchdog column regarding the Holiday Club, which has also brought me to approach you about a situation I’m in.

Firstly I must admit I don’t have any contracts or records any longer, since we signed up a long time ago and have moved homes a few times. The only information I have is all the correspondence from the Holiday Club.

According to them we signed up in about 2004 and made an initial payment of approximately P2,000. In around 2006, they started contacting me for these payments with arrears and interest.

I have not benefited in any way from the club, I haven’t been on holiday at all I only joined because I attended a workshop and signed up on impulse.

Now they claim we owe them for all the previous years with interest, the P2,000 we paid is not being considered. What does it say about renewing the contract annually?

How should we proceed?

With difficulty. We’ve had dealings with the Holiday Club in the past and on every occasion it has been very difficult to help people. In fact in the past the Holiday Club even threatened us with legal action defamation just for reporting on the cases. You can see their letters on our web site if you’re interested.

The problem is that you DID sign an agreement with them. You will only have been given 5 days to change your mind and then they will claim you’re signed up for life. The other complication is that your initial payment of P2,000 was only the beginning of your joining fee which is often over P15,000. Then there are annual compulsory payments which the Holiday Club have told us in the past are to be made for life.

We’ll approach the Holiday Club on your behalf and we’ll let you and readers of The Voice what happens.

Dear Consumer Watchdog #3

I want to buy a house that is for sale for P800,000. My bank will only lend me 90% of the value of a house but the market valuation for the house I want is only P600,000 which is below what the seller wanted. That means they will only lend me P540,000 which means I have to raise the balance of P260,000 myself.

The seller said he will remove some of the installed items in the house, fittings, accessories and things which were not yet completed at the time of valuation. I want to understand whether this is fair? Coz you the buyer are desperate for the house, is it up to you whether you take it or leave it, or you include your financier in all these stripping of the house?

Why are you even considering buying a house for P200,000 more than it’s market value? You must walk away from this deal immediately.

You can’t expect a bank to lend you more money than something is worth just because you want it badly. It is their money after all. Actually, it’s not even their money, it belongs to all the readers of The Voice who have deposited their hard-earned cash with them. The readers of The Voice don’t want you to borrow their money!

Who can help?

Who can you turn to for help when things go wrong, when you’ve been abused, when you’re unhappy or when you think your rights have been ignored?

Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. You can have the bad news first.

You can’t rely on the Government to help you. In fact it’s the Public Service you can’t rely on. Government are very good at debating things at length, concluding that action is required and finally passing laws but that’s all they can do. It’s the Public Service who are then tasked with enforcing the law. It’s the Police that are meant to stop us from driving like lunatics with a death-wish, it’s the Ministry of Health who are meant to stop charlatans from claiming that they are doctors who practice a form of so-called traditional medicine and it’s the Consumer Protection Unit who are meant to protect consumers from the more flagrant breaches of the Consumer Protection Regulations.

It’s just a shame that none of these bodies seem to do any of these things. For once I don’t think we need to see statistics to show that they are failing us. Think about it. If the Police were actually serious about doing something about the dreadful quality of driving we simply wouldn’t see combi and BX drivers driving like homicidal maniacs because they were be too afraid to do so. If there was a real risk of being stopped and hassled by the cops if they went through a red light then they wouldn’t do it.

If the regulators of health claims were serious then you simply wouldn’t see advertisements from crooked so-called “traditional doctor” charlatans because they would be too afraid to advertise their illegal and dangerous concoctions.

If the Consumer Protection Unit was a real threat to stores that held Batswana in complete contempt then we wouldn’t see furniture stores being supremely arrogant and ignoring the laws relating to store credit and attempting to deceive consumers about their charges. We wouldn’t see holiday clubs forcing people to continue their membership until their dying day because they have them trapped in lifetime contracts. Contracts that are, in my humble, non-legally-trained, but well-advised opinion, illegal, immoral and an insult to their victims.

If our regulators were worth their cost then we would see them actually doing something rather than just reading the Daily News and surfing the web all day.

A quick bit of good news is that we do now have a regulator that isn’t afraid to regulate. The admittedly horribly named Non-Bank Financial Industry Regulatory Authority appears to be a regulator that isn’t afraid to regulate. It seems that every week there’s a notice in the newspapers from NBFIRA warning us that some disreputable insurance broker is no longer registered and that we shouldn’t use their services. That’s what regulators are there for. A regulator that doesn’t regulate is a waste of space and money. Regulators that don’t actually regulate should be closed down and the money should be saved and instead given to me to spend on wine, women and song. At least I’d be happy with the spending, I’m not at the moment.

The good news is that there ARE people you can call on when you feel wronged or abused.

No, for once I’m not going to praise us at Consumer Watchdog. No, while I think we can offer support and solutions (and all entirely for free), this time I mean someone else.

I mean you.

The consumer him or herself is the most powerful enforcer of rights. You might not have legal powers to enforce the law but you have something much more useful, a very effective weapon for controlling the behaviour of suppliers. Our money. Those suppliers desperately need our money. Particularly these days when the international economy is in decline, they are going to be even more desperate to part us from our money.

Of course in hard times the sensible suppliers will offer us discounts, easier repayment terms or perhaps even a free something extra to tempt us to buy from them rather than the store next door.

The less scrupulous scumbags will be the ones that try sneakier ways of getting our cash. No, let me correct that. Some of them are that sneaky already. The stores that refuse to obey the law and disclose the full cost of buying an item on credit before you buy, as the law requires, don’t need to get any sneakier, they are sneaky enough already. The clubs that don’t tell you that it’s a lifetime contract before you sign it are crooked enough. The cellphone stores that claim they don’t offer a warranty just because they feel like it are abusing us already. None of these groups of thugs needs to get any worse in order to classify as “sneaky”.

I think that the next couple of years might be some of the best times for consumers. Sure, we’re all going to need to tighten our belts a bit, be a little more prudent and do as our parents told us when we were growing up but the balance of power is going to shift slightly. It’s going to shift in our favour. Suppliers are going to have to try a lot harder to attract us.

We consumers might soon have the power to put a couple of the sneakier companies out of business. We might be able to get our own back on the suppliers that have abused us. Wouldn’t that be fun?

This week’s stars

• Tapiwa and Tirelo, both from Aon Botswana for service above and beyond the call of duty and for “proving that it can be done”.

Be a skeptic

There has never been a better time to be a skeptic. With an avalanche of scam artists, some very shady stores selling on credit, the usual dodgy loan sharks and the looming financial crisis this is a time to start using our brains rather than just our emotions.

This is a time to use our critical thinking skills and not believe things just because someone says they’re true. This is a time to be a skeptic. There’s certainly no shortage of things to be skeptical about.

Holiday Clubs

No, not necessarily The Holiday Club, I mean ANY holiday club. I mean any so-called club that has a clause in the contract that says you can never leave the club. Any club that requires a lifetime membership and annual fees for the rest of your existence is not to be trusted, particularly if they don’t tell you about it BEFORE you sign the contract.

Why would they do this? Well, it might be a mistake of course but isn’t it more likely that it’s a plan to hook you in and then not let you go?

Holiday clubs are also not even worth the money most of the time. There are suggestions that it’s not even a particularly cheap way to take holidays. The last-minute deals offered by travel agents are often much cheaper. Couple that with the massive restrictions holiday clubs place on when you can take your holidays and you have to wonder why anyone would join.

Pyramid self-improvement schemes

Success University is the obvious example of this. They claim to be a mechanism for helping you get your hands on miraculous self-improvement DVDs, tapes and the like. In fact they’re a pyramid-selling scheme. What they really want you to do is join their pyramid and to start hiring people beneath you. With promises of vast riches it’s no wonder people find the idea appealing.

But it’s all nonsense. Nobody is ever going to make a fortune in a pyramid scheme other than the crooks at the top. Their money-making scheme is based entirely on the gullibility of the people beneath them in the pyramid.

I’m not the only one who think Success University is a pyramid selling scheme. In Namibia they’ve been outlawed because of the way they do their business.

And finally, why on earth do they call themselves a university when they’re not a university? Isn’t that a big clue that they are not what they claim?

They aren’t the only ones of course. Just last week I came across another scheme called “Be Motivated Today”. This is based in South Africa and also promises “wealth and financial freedom”, all from “passive income”, “earning money without having to work for it”. They are curiously vague about how exactly you are meant to do this but once you do some digging you quickly find out that they are a Success University clone. To make the mythical sums they mention you have to start recruiting other victims.

Pyramid selling schemes don’t work and you should avoid them.

Dodgy churches

It’s not just the so-called Church of Scientology that is primarily interested in money rather than salvation. We’ve all read the stories of often foreign-run independent little churches that have started in Botswana and have very quickly awarded their preachers top of the range 4x4s, flashy suits and jewellery. Just like a pyramid scheme they offer the impossible, demand cash up front and more often than not end up leaving the country in a hurry, often persued by their creditors, their “customers” and the Police.

Micro-lenders

Consumer Watchdog went to the recent workshop where the Non-Bank Financial Industry Regulatory Authority launched their new proposed rules governing micro-lenders. Unbelievably during a questions session a micro-lender stood up and attempted to defend the practice of taking customer’s ATM cards and PIN numbers so they could be sure to get their money back. Staggering I know, but at least the authorities put him in his place. In case anyone doesn’t know where I stand on the matter let me make it clear. Loan sharks who take ATM cards and PIN numbers from customers are crooks and scumbags. Simple enough?

Customer service gurus

A couple of weeks ago I was rather scathing about the travelling customer service experts who travel the world, telling us how we can deliver the very best service, how they know best and how much we should pay them for dispensing their wisdom.

Well, I’m told that the latest visiting expert at his big function repeatedly used the phrase “here in Tanzania” throughout his presentations. This is the same guy who on his web site proudly announces his work in “Bostwana”.

How much more evidence do we need to conclude that these travelling gurus offer nothing new? In fact I don’t think they offer anything old either. All they offer is words, the same words we’ve all heard before, the same as in their overpriced books.

Did you go to hear this guy speak? Did you hear him get confused about the country who was hosting his royal visit? Let me know what you thought!

This week’s stars

• Piet in the pharmacy at the Gaborone Private Hospital for outstanding service. Our reader says he is committed, always friendly and very helpful.
• Greg and the team at the Walmont Ambassador (yeah, I know we all think of it as the Grand Palm Hotel) for looking after visitors

A holiday from abuse?

We all need a holiday occasionally, but perhaps what we need more is a holiday from being abused by holiday clubs.

Yes, we’ve had another problem reported to us about holiday clubs. Before a certain company gets angry and threatens us with all sorts of legal nastiness again, I don’t mean “The Holiday Club” specifically, I mean holiday clubs in general.

Just to refresh your memory, in 2007 we reported on the problems various consumers had reported to us regarding a company called Suntide, who trade as "The Holiday Club". The problem they had was that once they had joined they weren’t permitted to leave. The contract they signed was “irrevocable”, something they could never cancel. We reported on the facts that were reported to us and commented that we felt it was unfair never to allow consumers to terminate a contract, even when they had paid everything they owed. That is just unreasonable. You can close a bank account, you can terminate a lease, you can even end your marriage if you follow some basic procedures and settle your debts. So why couldn’t you terminate a contract with The Holiday Club, that’s what we wanted to know.

So what was their reaction? They instructed their lawyers to send us a variety of threatening letters saying we had defamed them, interfered with their freedom to operate and that we had accused them of being cruel to cute, furry little animals.

Of course we hadn’t done any of these things. We wrote back to them on various occasions and told them to get a grip and leave us alone. Which they did, we didn’t hear from them again.

Now we’ve had another complaint, this time about another holiday club. This time it’s a company called Flexi-Club. The problem goes like this. While on holiday in South Africa a few months ago a couple, presumably after a few of those brightly-coloured drinks with the little umbrellas, were sweet-talked into signing a Flexi-Club membership application. In fact, they signed a 1-year credit agreement to buy the initial membership.

Remember how these clubs work. You pay an initial membership fee that includes a number of points that dictates the value of the holidays you can take. You then pay an annual fee that is dictated by the club for the on-going maintenance of your membership.

The problem that this consumer faced was that once they got back home from their holiday they realised that that had hopelessly over-extended themselves. Along with bond repayments, food, school fees and everything else they simply couldn’t afford the membership. They phoned Flexi-Club, emailed them, wrote to them and faxed them, sent them blood and other bodily fluid samples, pleading with Flexi-Club to let them change their minds. No such luck.

Of course it’s true that they DID voluntarily sign a contract. Nobody held a gun to their heads, they weren’t in fear for their lives. What’s more the credit agreement they signed to pay the initial membership fee did, in fact, have a cancellation clause. OK, a perfectly useless cancellation clause. It says that they can change their minds but only within 5 business days and only if they did so in writing. Which of course was useless because they were on holiday at the time. The cancellation clause also doesn’t count if they signed the agreement at Flexi-Club’s office.

So the problem is that once you sign the contract you’re committed and there’s little chance you can get out of it. However, then there is the other problem. Nowhere in the contract and regulations that the consumer was given does it describe how they can change their minds after they’ve paid the membership fee. There’s no obvious way they can terminate their membership of this “Club”. That’s the problem with holiday clubs in general. They all appear to be lifetime commitments and that’s wrong. It’s particularly wrong as they rarely, if ever, tell you this before you sign the contract. You only find this out when you change your mind later.

That was the problem with The Holiday Club and it seems to be the same with Flexi-Club. It’s very easy to get caught but very difficult, if not impossible, to escape.

We contacted Flexi-Club to ask about how members can leave but they have treated us the same way they treated the consumer who contacted us. We’ve been ignored.

So what’s our advice regarding holiday clubs?

Steer clear of them. They’re not even a very good way of taking holidays. They give you little flexibility, there are huge restrictions on when you can go on holiday, where you can go and, most importantly, they only provide accommodation. They don’t pay for your transport, food, drink or entertainment. You are much better off going to your local travel agent and finding what amazing special deals they have on offer.

If you do a quick search of other consumer advocacy web site you’ll see that we are not the only ones warning people about holiday clubs in general and certain clubs in particular. You can see some links to these reports on our web site. If you fancy some amusement you can also see some of the threatening letters we got last time as well as our very polite letters back to them suggesting where they could stick their silly threats.

This week’s stars

• Khumo at Air Botswana yet again for outstanding customer care, for energy and dedication.
• Willem and the entire team at Cafe Dijo for running an incredibly friendly restaurant.