‘Pay back the money’ battles . . . continued
Times Media consumer writer Wendy Knowler writes a weekly column on issues affecting consumers. If you have something you would like her to investigate, send your queries to: consumer@knowler.co.za Follow her on Twitter: @wendyknowler
A WOMAN who paid R3 800 for a hair weave in mid-November and still hasn’t received it; a man who paid R2 700 for a tombstone back in 2014 which has yet to be erected, and a husband who transferred R3 000 to his wife via EFT six months ago but instead paid a company by mistake – and the owner refuses to engage with him.
These are but a few of the many “pay back the money” cases which have landed in my inbox in the last week in response to my invitation to readers to tell me about their battle to get refunds out of companies.
Take the case of Velaphi Vilakazi of Ermelo. He bought a tombstone from a company called Urgent Tombstones of Groblersdal, paying for it in full (R2 730) by the end of July 2014 – and he has the invoice and the receipts to prove it.
The contract stated that the tombstone, for a relative, would be erected within 60 days of full payment, but that has never happened.
“When I called them, they asked me to send slips and then said they would erect it the following week, but it never happened,” he said.
“I went to the Small Claims Court in Ermelo but could not be helped as they closed the shop where I bought the tombstone and now the closest branch is 200km away.”
“There are a lot of people that are in my situation with this company . . .”
I sent an e-mail to the address on the company’s website and it came back undelivered. The contact numbers also proved to be a dead end.
It’s a shocking betrayal – taking money for something as important and heartfelt as a tombstone, and then failing to deliver.
I’m including this story in the hope that it will lead to justice and closure for this family, one way or the other.
I did manage to get hold of the Johannesburg-based owner of the hair weave company who claimed the owner of her rented premises had taken her goods and changed the locks – an illegal act, incidentally – and that she had lost everything and was trying to rebuild her business.
She was supposed to have sent the weave to Zola Yozi of Khayelitsha via Postnet.
I told her that the fact that she hadn’t made contact with Yozi, and hadn’t refunded a cent in four months, smelt of fraud. She undertook to contact Yozi and start refunding her. I’m giving her a break for now.
I’m all for encouraging and supporting small businesses, but doing transactions online with an unknown entity is very risky indeed.
Brandon Roelf of Parow’s experience is sadly not uncommon. He logged onto his bank’s website to do a R3 000 transfer to his wife’s account but hit another saved beneficiary – an electronics company – instead.
That was more than six months ago, and despite the company acknowledging receiving the money, the owner just hasn’t seen it fit to pay it back.
What’s sorely lacking is empathy for Roelf, a one-time customer, nogal. It’s an easy mistake to make with beneficiaries’ lists. The money was not earned by the company and keeping it is a form of theft. I’m trying to convince the company of that. To be continued . . .
On taking up a similar case a few years ago, the company owner told me he’d kept the money as he was being treated for cancer. Warped justification of a wrong act.