We get an email

Attn: Consumer Watchdog

THE RETAIL/BUSINESS IS RIPPING US OF DAILY, THEY NEVER REDUCED PRICE AFTER THE FALL OF OIL PRICES.

Following the huge reduction in the price of crude oil down to US$ 52.00 per barrel, we urge you kindly but without delay to;

REDUCE YOUR PRICES IMMEDIATELY!

“It will adjust itself through market mechanism” according to the incompetent, unable, failing and ridiculous white elephant Ministry of Trade and Consumer affairs, knowing that all business is owned by INDIANS !

WHAT A RIPP-OFF
IF YOU ARE WHAT YOU CLAIM TO BE A “CONSUMER WATCHDOG”
“DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT “

Regards,

Consumer interest group !

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Where shall I begin?

Firstly, I'll ask why some people people think that we are so infantile that we need the Government to control prices for us. Yes, the market will decide the right level for prices but it's naive to think that "free market" means it's free from control. It means that we are free to take from it what we can afford and free to choose the suppliers from whom we buy. Let's just buy wisely and not go to stores where the prices are higher than we think they should be. They'll soon change their prices if sufficient people vote with their feet and with their wallets and purses.

I'm no defender of the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Consumer Affairs Unit, I happen to think we can survive perfectly well without their services.

Secondly claiming that "all business" is owned by Indians is stupid, racist and (sorry for the technical term) crap.

Finally, asking Consumer Watchdog to "so something" about prices is a mistake. No, we won't.

Nor should anyone else. To misquote Dr Johnson, price controls are "the last refuge of a scoundrel". The moment you pass over control of prices to some buffoon in a Government office you get economic stagnation, delusions of competence and black markets. The technical term for this is "Zimbabwe".

Here endeth the lesson.

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

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice

I went to a bar in Palapye and they had a special offer on Carlsberg beer. If you bought one bottle they would give you a second bottle free.

I thought this was a very good offer but when I got the bottle of beer and the free second one I noticed that they both had an expiry date in June this year.

What should I do?

Take them back. Demand that the owner or manager of the bar gives you your money back immediately. If they refuse feel free to tell them that they have broken Section 12 of the Food Control Act which states that beer must have an expiry date and that it the seller must abide by it. Anything sold after the expiry date “shall not be regarded as marketable or fit for human consumption”.

Any store that ignores this is liable for “a fine of P1,000 and to imprisonment for 3 months”. Better still if they ignore the warning and continue to sell expired stock they may face “an additional fine of P500 and imprisonment for one month for each day that the offence continues”. If they continue to sell dodgy beer for a month they might not be seen again for years!

Consumers have to be very vigilant when buying food and drink. OK, expired beer probably isn’t going to kill you but things like chicken, pork and seafood have to be treated very carefully. Hundreds of thousands of people in Africa die from food-poisoning every year and a lot of this comes from badly stored food.

As consumers we need the authorities to be much more aggressive in policing food and drink outlets to make sure that they know their obligations and abide by them.

Update: We did a little bar exploration following this complaint and found that the same expired beer was being sold in bars in Gaborone as well. We’ll be tracking down the distributors and seeing what they have to say for themselves. We’ll keep you posted.

The Voice - Dear Consumer's Voice

Dear Consumer’s Voice

In May I went to Super Power Doors to buy doors for my house. I found the doors that I liked and together they costed P5,700. I paid a deposit of P3000 and was told my doors would arrive in October.

Earlier this month I went back to Super Power Doors to check if the doors have arrived. While I was there I found out they had new doors in stock. The doors were much better than the ones I had chosen but more expensive. I decided not to wait until October and take one of these better doors that they had in stock. The cost of the new door after they gave me a discount was P6,500. I paid them another P3,500 and I was able to take the door.

A few days later I discovered that Builders World had exactly the same door in stock but at a much lower price. After a discount they could offer me the door for less than P5,000.

On realising this, I approached Super Power Doors and asked them to give me the difference between what they and Builders World charge or agree to have me return the door and get back my P6,500.00. They refused. Now I feel cheated because I paid a ridiculously high price for the door.

What should I do?

I’m sorry but what do you expect?

The first store didn’t deceive you, they were totally honest about the price they were charging and you accepted it without any complaint. You entered quite willingly into a contract with Super Power Doors and they have kept to their side of the bargain so why would they want to take the doors back or give you any compensation?

Unfortunately you’ve paid the price for not shopping around. When you are preparing to spend any amount of money, particularly when it’s a large sum, you really must shop around.

An outbreak of naiveté

Don’t panic. I don’t mean stupid or uneducated or ignorant. I mean naïve. Naïve is used by psychologists to mean a creature that is new to a situation or an experience. It is used by doctors to mean a patient who has not taken a particular drug before. Websters Dictionary defines it as “showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience”.

Well, there’s a lot of it about.

At Consumer Watchdog we’ve had a series of people contact us over the last few weeks asking for help. They were all in situations that really did seem to illustrate the general level of naivete that abounds in the marketplace.

One person got in touch because she had bought a door from a supplier. Rather than embarrass anyone unnecessarily I’ll just call them Company A. She spent a huge amount of money on the door, took it home, had it installed and was happy. Well she was until she discovered that exactly the same door was for sale at Company B for P1,500 less.

Most of us would have been frustrated by that, would have moaned a bit but would have learned a lesson from the experience. Not in this case. She went back to Company A and demanded that they either take back the door and give her a full refund or alternatively they should pay her the difference between the two prices. Not surprisingly Company A said No. That’s when she contacted us, outraged that they hadn’t done as she had asked.

We were forced to explain to her that there was really nothing we could do to help. She had willingly bought from Company A, they hadn’t lied about anything, they hadn’t deceived her, they hadn’t done anything wrong and there was no reason to complain to anyone or expect the company to fix anything.

The only person who had done anything wrong was the shopper herself. She hadn’t done what we all should do and that’s to shop around before buying anything expensive.

We had another consumer who contacted us, distressed because he’d been “blacklisted” because his TV had been repossessed. He’d bought the TV on credit but very quickly fell behind with the repayments. The store eventually came to take the TV away but told him that of course he would still owe them the outstanding amount. By the time he contacted us, the store had sold the TV, were still pursuing him for the balance and he’d been registered with a credit agency as a bad payer. His question was “Do they have the right to do this?” Our answer was “Yes”.

He failed to adhere to his credit agreement, they repossessed the TV, they sold it as second hand, got back a little of the money but he still owed them the balance. He had defaulted on his agreement, he had failed to make the payments he agreed to. The store had every right to register him as such.

The only person at fault was the shopper himself. He signed an agreement that he probably knew he couldn’t keep up with.

Another consumer called in with a problem with a property. He had found an office to rent, but didn’t want to move in for a month so paid the landlord a month’s rent as well as a fee for writing a tenancy agreement. The next month his plans changed and he told the landlord he wasn’t moving in and could he please have the previous month’s rent back? The landlord said No and the tenant was bewildered and angry. We had to explain in simple terms that the landlord had done nothing wrong. He had reserved the property for the tenant, he hadn’t let it out to anyone else, he’d had it ready for the tenant to move in. It wasn’t the landlord’s fault that the tenant changed his mind.

In fact the landlord was cross that the tenant had just walked away from his obligations but luckily for the tenant they had never gotten around to signing the agreement so there was little that could be done.

The person at fault was the tenant for not realising that he had obligations as well as the landlord.

Of course not all the stories we hear involve customers being naïve like these cases. In most cases the customer really has been wronged, has been abused and sometimes has been lied to. There are occasional cases reported to us that are so scandalous we believe someone should be in prison, not just in receipt of angry letters form Consumer Watchdog.

But consumers don’t help themselves and their fellow consumers when they get themselves into situations where THEY are in the wrong. It IS sometimes the customer’s fault that they have been listed with TransUnion, their TV has been repossessed or they’ve just spent too much money on things. It’s time that some consumers abandoned naivete and embraced maturity, common sense and logic.

To help we’ve posted a series of Shopper’s Guides on our web site. So far these cover things like store credit, buying used cars, personal computers and cellphones. Take a look and let us know what you think. Also tell us what other products or services you think we should cover?

This week’s stars!

• Kutlwano at Air Botswana for being patient and helpful and going out of her way to meet a customers needs.
• Kabelo "KB" Johannes of Security Systems for showing how it can be done.
• Lorato Mogorosi at KFC in G-West for treating customers with respect and understanding that they pay her salary!
• Wonder Kepaletswe at Botswana Life for always making a follow up.