Pick up
your pebbles and face Goliath.
In the preamble of
the Consumer affairs act you find this gem:
The
people of South Africa recognise—
That
it is necessary to develop and employ innovative means to—
(b) PROTECT the interests of all consumers, ensure accessible, transparent
and
efficient redress for consumers who are subjected to abuse or
exploitation in
the
marketplace; and (c) to give
effect to internationally recognised customer rights.
Service
providers are in business for one reason and one reason ONLY: TO MAKE MONEY.
Do not
be fooled by any Mission or Vision
statements that might imply otherwise.
Due to
this ultimate vision client service
will always play second fiddle to their ultimate goal.
That is
why you find companies like Cell C being prepared to pay Hundreds of thousands
of Rand in legal fees to try and proof why they did not solve a client’s R5000
problem, a problem where the probability of the client being right was in the
favour of the client.
A
recent yet unreported case between a bank and a client in the Eastern Cape
found the bank in default in that they approved the finance on a home loan
recklessly and the case was found in favour of the client. The bank has now
found a technical point and the message is clear “we are losing cases because
of so-called reckless lending” and “we will fight the tendency no matter what
it cost us”
AS CAN
BE SEEN FROM THESE 2 CASES THERE IS A CONCERTED EFFORT BY BUSINESS TO RATHER
REMOVE THE “protect” portion from the above quote.
So what
am I saying? Consumers are being
threatened, painted into corners, lied to , cheated, and about any other
illegal and unethical technique used to
“ enforce our rights” by business. And
consumers as standing idly by and taking the blows and basically crucifying
themselves rather than stand up and fight.
Join us
in actions to counter this.
Here
are some actions that have been started and the more people get involved with
it the more clout we are going to have to take on these unethical actions of
corporates – especially banks
1.
The website www.legaltalk.co.za has all sorts of
guidelines and links on how to handle specific situations – Debt, Rentals
etc. Make a point to put this website as
a
“Favourite” on your browser. You might just find the answer to your
problem for FREE!
2.
Join us in our Consumers in
Action drive – a website for this will soon be available.
and get involved!
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