Wendy Knowler highlights stories from the past 16 years in her last Consumer Watch column.
Dear readers,
This is my last Consumer Watch column. An 18-month stint on a magazine aside, I’ve been writing a consumer column for various Independent Newspapers titles for the past 16 years, the past eight of those in this format.
Two columns a week for eight years.
Thousands of e-mails exchanged with readers all over the country, from the woman who complained about the settlement value she’d been given for her Porsche, and another who was ripped off by the technician who repaired her walk-in fridge, to the many who were about to lose their cars or homes to auction; those who went under debt review because they were drowning in debt, only to discover that their payments never reached their credit providers, and, the pensioner who asked if it was okay to feed her cat table scraps because she couldn’t afford cat food any more.
I’ve been humbled by readers’ willingness to share their most personal experiences with me; to trust me with their financial information and their stories.
I’ve helped and advised many of them over the years, but I’m haunted by the fact that I haven’t been able to take up every case, or even answer every e-mail. I’m truly sorry about that.
To my core of regular readers who’ve so often alerted me to the latest pack shrinkage cases – “Cadbury slabs are down to 150g now!”, taken photos of odd or funny retail signs and sent them to me, and even posted me consumer-related books they thought I’d find interesting, a thousand thank yous.
I confess to cursing my massive inbox on occasion – okay, a lot – but the truth is that without all those “please help!” e-mails, I wouldn’t have been able to fill this space, week after week, and I wouldn’t have the experience and insight required to do this job.
I have learnt so much about how to be a savvy consumer from 16 years of dealing with the mistakes and calamities which readers have shared with me.
Stories which stand out for me:
The Corsa Lite backlite saga
This which began in March 2007. The backlite (back windscreen) of Durban sales rep Jodi Adam’s 2006 Corsa Lite shattered dramatically for no apparent reason while she was driving on the N2.
Shaken, she took the car to her local dealership, and was told she’d have to claim on her insurance and pay the excess.
It was when another Corsa Lite owner arrived, minutes later, with the same problem, that Adam suspected a factory fault.
The manufacturer denied this, but over the course of the following months, having repeatedly publicised the issue in this column, several hundred Corsa Lite owners who’d experienced it – and been made to claim on their insurance policies – came forward to tell me their stories.
Finally, in October 2007, six months after my first reports, and having pinpointed the cause and fixed the problem, GMSA issued a recall, or a “field action campaign” as they called it, sending registered letters to 11 000 Corsa Lite owners, asking them to contact their dealers to have their rear windows replaced free.
Interestingly, the timeline on such an issue would be dramatically shortened today, thanks to social media.
Chargeback
This is one of my biggest prouds. While consumers in other countries were familiar with the protection called chargeback, offered by credit card companies globally, via the issuing banks, few South Africans knew of its existence – and the local banks certainly weren’t doing anything to spread the word.
If you pay for goods or services with your credit card and you don’t get them, for whatever reason, you may apply for chargeback by filling in a dispute form at the bank that issued your card.
It’s essentially a reversal of the initial purchase transaction.
Having learnt of the protection mechanism shortly after the collapse of Nationwide Airlines in 2008, I began writing about it in this column, and many people had their airfares refunded as a result.
I repeated the awareness campaign with the collapse of Velvet Sky and by the time 1Time flew no more, the banks themselves were issuing press releases about chargeback.
Prescribed debt
This has been a long-running educational campaign of mine, given that debt collectors have been legally entitled to hound consumers to pay old, technically prescribed debts, because it’s up to the consumer to know about prescription and raise it as a defence.
If you have not, in the past three years, made a payment towards settling a debt, acknowledged it in any way or been summonsed in respect of it, it is deemed to have prescribed and you are not required to pay it.
Amendments to the National Credit Act – not yet in force – will make it illegal for companies to sell or collect prescribed debt. Naturally I think that’s amazing news.
That’s not to say I support people not paying their debts, but three years is enough time for a company to attempt to collect what they are owed, and a not-so-savoury industry has grown out of selling, and re-selling, very old debts, plumped up with interest and costs – and the many consumers who have acknowledged the debt, being ignorant of the Prescription Act, have ended up paying far too dearly for long past debt dodge.
The “donkey” meat story
In December 2012, I broke the story that 68 percent of the samples of minced meat, burger patties, deli meats and sausages DNA-tested by Stellenbosch University were found to contain meat species which were not declared on the label, pork and chicken being the most undeclared meat species.
The undeclared pork was the most shocking discovery, given the religious significance for the non-pork eating Muslim and Jewish communities, but it was the discovery of donkey in a single processed meat sample – along with four testing positive for goat and another for water buffalo – which saw the story hitting the headlines again, in a big way, three months later when the horse meat scandal broke in the UK.
The “699” case
What’s become the biggest scandal to hit the South African motoring industry first appeared on this page on June 30, and then for many weeks after that.
About 25 000 Satinsky clients, driving around with those gaudy “New Car for R699pm” stickers on their cars, in exchange for an “advertising fee” to offset their repayment to the financing bank, were horrified to discover that the fee had suddenly dried up, leaving many in a desperate financial position. And all Satinsky was doing was suggesting they sign up for some rewards programme.
As the weeks and months rolled by, shocking details emerged, with accusations ranging from lack of due diligence to fraud on behalf of the players involved in the ill-fated scheme. And it’s not over yet.
The Consumer Protection Act (CPA)
From the run-up to the CPA becoming effective in 2011, and virtually every week since, it’s been my mission to use reader experiences with companies to heighten awareness of what the act says and how it applies to us, and to seek clarification and interpretation from the authorities on some of the act’s more vague sections. And I’ve been happy to help companies, big and small, re-word their returns policies in order to comply with the act.
Getting money out of companies – especially big sums – for readers felt wonderful, of course, but I have always drawn my greatest satisfaction from hearing from those who’ve said something that I wrote on this page spared them from being ripped off, or helped them fight, and win, their own battles. That’s what it’s about, ultimately – helping consumers to empower themselves.
In the CPA we have some of the best consumer protection in the world, but if consumers don’t know and understand it, and how they can use it to claim their rights, it’s useless. And don’t get me started on enforcement…
My thanks to Independent Newspapers for affording me this platform all these years, to the sub-editors for making my words look good on the page, and for putting up with my frequently late copy, and most of all, to you, the readers, for your kind words of encouragement, and for teaching me so much.
I wish you well.