Black Friday fraud complaints rock OK Furniture
MANZINI - Several customers of one of the biggest furniture shops in the country have reported allegedly fraudulent activities which took place on their Black Friday lay-buys.
After the alleged fraudulent activities were reported to the shop and police, it is said that the OK Furniture Store’s Human Resources Office was flooded with resignation letters from the implicated workers after they learnt that disciplinary hearings were initiated and the police had been roped in.
According to a source close to the matter, during the 2023 Black Friday sales, the furniture shop allowed its customers to lay-buy items and most of them were given up to December 31, 2023 to pay them up. In 2023, Black Friday was on November 24 and it is said that most of the affected customers lost about E7 000 each.
The source said several customers took advantage of the offer and they paid deposits for various household items. The agreement, according to the source ,was that they would buy the items with the Black Friday sale price even though they were purchasing it through lay-buy. This, he said, happened mainly in the furniture shop’s Manzini branch.
Paying
Thereafter, he alleged that while the customers were still paying for their items and the prices had gone back to normal prices (up to 70 per cent more than the Black Friday prices), some of the workers scouted for other customers who wanted to buy the same household items. The source claimed that the employees offered the scouted customers the items at lower than the original price - slightly below the Black Friday sale price.
He alleged that some of the implicated workers pocketed the money from the customers outside the store, while others were made to pay the cashiers, which made the customers suspect that the employees worked as a syndicate. The source went on to say that other customers have revealed that they were purportedly told to make payments through MTN Eswatini Mobile Money (MoMo) and some of that money was supposedly never remitted to the store.
After receiving the payment from the customers whom they scouted, the source alleged that the implicated workers would pay the lay-buy balances and take the remaining money for their benefit.
“This means that they were tempering with the lay-buy accounts, so that they can be able to release the items to their scouted customers, without management noticing,” the source said.
However, the source highlighted that some of the lay-buys (items) which they sold to their scouted customers had been fully paid, but when the real owners cleared the balances, they found that the items were out of stock, which meant that they had to wait until they (items) were available in stock.
He claimed that when the items were available in stock, the implicated workers would call their scouted clients and release the furniture to them.
One of the affected customers bought, through laybuy, a bed which was E7 000 during the Black Friday sale, while its original price was E12 000. She said she meant to use it for umhlambiso (wedding gift) for a former Manzini North politician’s wedding.
She said she was given up to December 31, 2023, to pay in full for the bed and she cleared her balance on December 29, 2023.
Representatives
However, she said the sales representatives told her that the bed was out of stock. She said after highlighting to them that she would need it before or on March 2, 2024, for umhlambiso, they promised to call her immediately when they had it in stock.
Indeed, she said towards the end of February 2024, they called and notified her that her bed was available in stock and she could pick it up. She said since March 2, 2024 (umhlambiso day) was close, she asked to pick it up on that day (March 2) and the sales representative agreed.
However, she alleged that when she called on March 2, 2024, around noon, the sales representative did not pick up his cellphone. The customer said she then sent some men with a car to pick up the bed at the store, but when they arrived, they were told that the warehouse, where the bed was, had closed for the day and it would open on Monday.
On the following Monday, she said she went to the furniture shop, but they did not understand the store’s employee who attended to her (customer) together with the former politician. She said the employee told them that their system reflects that in their laybuy account, she had bought a Television set and it had been released to its owner. She said when they asked him how much happened under their watch; the employee told them that it meant that someone might have fiddled with the system.
Thereafter, she said they demanded to see the manager and they were told that he was away. Additionally, the customer said they told the employee that they wanted to see anyone who was standing in for the manager.
“The acting manager told us that the matter was beyond his powers and he asked to refer it to the regional manager’s office,” she said.
On the following day (Tuesday), she said the regional manager called them and he admitted that kugangekile (a wrongful act was committed). She said they had a meeting with the regional manager and also communicated telephonically.
Implicated
At some point, she said the regional manager said the implicated workers had been called for a disciplinary hearing and he invited them. She further said when they were preparing to attend the disciplinary hearing; they were informed that the implicated workers had resigned. The customer also told this publication that recently, the regional manager had not been forthcoming with information, in particular developments on when they were going to get the bed.
The source said a number of the implicated employees resigned from the establishment immediately after they were informed about planned disciplinary hearings. Again, the source said that some of the customers who came to report complaints were also advised to approach the Fraud Department of the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) as they were already investigating other similar cases.
On the same note, Deputy Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Assistant Superintendent Nosipho Mnguni, confirmed that officers from the Fraud Department were investigating the matter. Mnguni also said she could not comment much about the matter, because some of the suspects had already appeared before court. However, she highlighted that the investigation was still ongoing as more complainants were still approaching the police to open cases.