ANOTHER TONER CARTRIDGE SCAM IN AFRICA ……

[Anonymous]

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=594&art_id=vn20080625060749275C427246
Don’t pay for what you didn’t order
Every
week I receive e-mails that ram home the fact that the Consumer
Protection Bill can’t be passed into law quickly enough.They provide
perfect case studies for many of the bill’s provisions.Section 21, for
example, concerns “unsolicited goods or services”.It states: “If a
supplier delivers a larger quantity of goods than the consumer agreed
to buy, the excess goods are unsolicited unless the consumer has
rejected the entire delivery.”If a person is in possession of any
unsolicited goods, the person may (a) retain the goods or (b) return
the goods to the apparent supplier or deliverer at the risk and expense
of the supplier or deliverer.”

Unfortunately for a pastor in
Port Elizabeth, South African consumers don’t yet have the protection
of this bill, although it has been tabled in parliament.The pastor told
me how he’d been approached by a Sandton-based business called SA Image
Solutions, inviting him to buy what was said to be superior-quality,
oil-based printer cartridges.He agreed to buy one set at a cost of
R980, and duly received the cartridges in the mail.

But it didn’t end there.
“Later
they sent us another set of cartridges, then called, telling us to pay
for them.”I had a long argument with a man calling himself Gavin,
telling him that we didn’t order another set.”He lied, saying we had
ordered two sets initially and had to pay for both.”I asked him to
prove that we ordered two, but he couldn’t.”In the end, the pastor, not
wishing to do anything that may reflect badly on his church’s good
reputation, gave in and paid for the second set.

But when a third set arrived, he dug in his heels.
“A
man calling himself Craig called me from SA Image Solutions, telling me
we had originally ordered three sets and due to delays they couldn’t
send all of them at once, so they had staggered our order.”I told him I
had never ordered three sets.”The pastor then received a fax from the
company, assuring him that if he paid for the third set, they would
stop sending the cartridges to him.

But he has no intention of giving in a second time.
The
Hellopeter consumer complaints website has several complaints about the
same company.Most of the complainants claim they were repeatedly sent
printer cartridges that they hadn’t agreed to buy.One wrote: “I agreed
to buy two ‘top-quality’ cartridges at a 25 percent discounted rate and
received a Woolworths voucher as a ‘thank you’.”I received two
cartridges, and then another three, and when I called to advise the
company that I hadn’t placed such an order, I was told that it was the
remainder of my initial order, and that they could only supply a
minimum of five.”

Several complainants claim they were verbally
abused, harassed and threatened with legal action and blacklisting if
they refused to pay.Of course, in the absence of any written proof that
the consumers were failing to pay for goods that they had legitimately
ordered, those threats, if they were indeed issued, were
empty.Contacted for comment, SA Image Solutions owner Krishna Naicker
said because the company provided small businesses with the fantastic
offer of a 25% discount on the cartridges, the deal only applied to a
minimum order of three sets of cartridges.”But because we cold call
people all over the country, getting their names and numbers from phone
directories, and don’t do credit checks, we can’t send all three sets
in one go.”Instead, we wait to see if they pay for the first set and
then send the second and third,” he said.”We can’t just supply all
three sets at once because they might run away and not pay.”The sales
staff were instructed to tell prospective customers that the price was
conditional upon a minimum order of three sets of cartridges, Naicker
said.”But sometimes the sales clerks get things wrong,” he conceded.As
for the threatening “pay up” calls his employees are alleged to have
made, Naicker said his company was “aggressive” in compelling clients
to pay, because “thousands” accepted the cartridges, but refused to pay
for them.

The call centre conversations were not taped, so there was no proof of who said what.
Moral
of the story: It’s always risky to buy products, unseen, over the phone
from people or companies you haven’t done business with before.And any
time a company or individual claims you owe them money, insist that
they prove it.This can be by means of a signed document or phone
conversation recording – showing you agreed to buy the product or
service at that price.

[Author]

July 1, 2008 at 11:00 AM