THE GIRL STAR OF ABSA BANK'S CUSTOMER CARE

Dear Credit Card users,

           Shona Herbst is the star of Absa Bank’s customer service even though her name is far down its who’s who list.

On this occasion she completely outshone the top brass including possibly Maria Ramos the Bank’s head, who is also the CEO of Britain’s Barclays Africa Group which now owns Absa.

          I say possibly because I sent emails to maria.ramos@absa.co.za but I never got a reply from her. I know that CEO’s like her are very busy and have to be protected from complaining clients like me, but what’s the point in her having a personal email address if she doesn’t reply personally.

          Shona, who works at a small branch in Cape Town, had the final answer to my problem after head office had bungled its way around for months with inexplicable answers to my many emails and phone calls.

          Here is her story. 
          Actually it’s mine but she is the heroine.      

          I was the victim of a scam on my Absa credit card by a company from goodness knows where with the picturesque “merchant name” of Pinnacle.com8668076974.  

          The worst part of my experience however was the way Absa’s head office in Johannesburg sided with the crooks.

          When both my wife and I had been loyal clients for something like 20 years I didn’t expect my word to be completely ignored especially when it was backed by solid facts.

          My case was fortified even further by numerous internet tales of woe of people having been defrauded by what was clearly the same organisation because the method, the product and even the amounts of money matched my experience.  
        

         
The only person who believed me from start to finish was Shona.        

         


        Here’s what happened.  In August 2014 I was Googling away when I came across this Marie Claire magazine cover that was all about skin care. With it were two trial offers for creams at R110 each. I completed the on-line order for one of each with my credit card details and the transactions went through on 7 August 2014 according to my card statement.

Initially I didn’t think there was anything odd when the order failed to arrive as there had been a postal strike in South Africa.

          I was only alerted to the scam in December when I got my card statement showing that two unauthorised amounts of R1087 had been charged to my account the previous month in the name of these two products. So I contacted Matt Loy head of the Digital section of Associated Media Publishing that publishes Marie Claire in South Africa.

          He told me that the cover I had seen was a fake as they had never run or promoted the banners in question. He said this looked like a scam and suggested I contact my bank as soon as possible to request a charge back for all the amounts.                 

 So that’s what I did at my local Long Beach Mall Absa Branch. There Shona picked up the phone right away and told the Card Division to reverse all four payments.

          This is how the saga continued.

February 2/ 2015: I followed up with an email to Absa’s Disputes department giving the reference number Herbst had given me.  “I was told the amounts involved could be reversed,” I wrote. “Can you tell me what is happening about this?”

That’s when the bungling started.

February 9: Disputes consultant Minzelle van Wyk replied by email asking me for all the details I had already given to the branch. I told her she should be able to get this with the reference number the branch had given me otherwise what was the point of me being given one. I also tried to call her at the 086 number given at the bottom of her email. The woman who answered said they did not know her. And when I told her Minzelle was in the Disputes department she said they could not put calls through to that section.

February 10: My next move was to complain to Yolande Fourie CEO Complaint Adjudicator who I got when I phoned the CEO’s office about the bad service I was getting. She emailed me saying she was sorry about the way I had been treated and asked for the name of the person at the branch who had helped me “as disputes seem to have a problem tracing the information.” I replied saying, “I realise it is not your fault but it certainly caps it all to hear that Disputes has lost the information” I then repeated my complaint to her.

February 11: I emailed Yolande again saying that Doctor (that appears to be his name) Mohlala the manager of the Disputes department at her Credit Card Division had phoned me to ask me for the information in the email I had just sent her. “He said he hasn’t been in touch with you when I told him I had given you the answers to the questions he was asking,” I explained. “It seems the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing at Absa.”

February 11: Evidently as a result of Shona’s call my card was credited with all four amounts although I was unaware of this at the time as I had not yet seen my statement dated February 13.

February 12: Yolande emails me to say she has escalated the matter “to card Division” and she gives me a new reference number. She evidently didn’t know that the amounts had already been charged back.

          I was relieved when I saw the four credits on my February 13 statement and I was happy everything had been sorted out without me losing a cent.

          How wrong I was.

          What the bank didn’t tell me until well into April 2015 was that when the credits were made they kept me in the dark about the possibility that they could be reversed at a later stage when the “transaction vouchers” were received from the merchant.

April 14: My card statement showed that the four transactions were back.

It was now more than six months since my card was debited with the initial amounts and I still hadn’t received the creams they were expecting me to pay for.

April 16: When I told Yolande what had happened she replied that she could not help me as she was on maternity leave. She suggested I contact my branch, the card division or I could email CEO@absa.co.za.  This email address is misleading. It gives the impression that it gets you straight to Maria Ramos. It doesn’t. You get an automatic reply and it’s not a direct line to her.

          After calling head office once more I started all over again, this time with another CEO Complaint Adjudicator Charmaine Sharp.

April 21: Here’s what Sharp told me in an email with my comments in brackets. “The items (charges) were returned in February as per your request, but were presented again as according to the company this is a valid transaction. You need to provide proof that you have tried to stop these transactions.” I replied saying that on 14 December 2014 I sent an email stating that “on 7 August 2014 I bought a trial offer of the two skin creams and I authorised for a total of R220 to be taken off my card. Needless to say I have not received the creams and now more money is being deducted from my card quite illegally. I can only conclude that this cream promotion is a swindle unless you can convince me otherwise.” The reply I got was that my ticket had been submitted and I must let them know if I have any issues. No name of the sender or the company was given. Charmaine attached 56 pages the firm had sent to justify that the transactions were valid and added, “According to the tracking sheets the goods were delivered as well. You need to provide proof that you have returned the goods” (This was impossible as I had never received them).

The merchant’s documents themselves prove what a fraud it was but the Bank ignored the obvious discrepancies. The staff kept repeating that I must be liable because I gave my card details; agreed to the Terms and Conditions (T&Cs), even though I never saw them and had received the goods. Here are some of the many examples that showed how the supplier’s laughable gaffes completely supported my allegations.

Example 1: The firm stated: “Received email (this is the one mentioned under April 21 above) 14/12/14 disputing trial charge, didn’t receive yet. Replied with terms and conditions verifying shipping address and offering reship and 25% refund.” This was not the reply I got and I never saw the T&C’s until they were sent in the bundle of 56 pages. These showed that they had evidently got another scam mixed up with mine. They referred to products which I never ordered. “So who in their right mind would accept these conditions?” I asked my Bank. “I ordered Cellapuria and Amabella to improve the skin whereas the T&C’s referred to weight reducing products Cleanse EFX and SlimGenix Pro.”

Example 2: The T&C’s also allegedly gave them the right to automatically deduct various amounts from my card on a monthly basis after my initial order with other impossible to comply with conditions.

Example 3: The firm claimed I was “still benefiting from the product I received in exchange for this transaction” and that it was sent to me by “Registered letter.” It never dawned on Absa’s head office staff that in South Africa registered letters have to be collected from the post office where you have to sign for them and show your ID document. And no evidence of this was produced as it never happened.

April 28: After telling me she was now closing the case on her side Charmaine sent me feedback she got from Nell Skosana, another Disputes consultant. Skosana in her wisdom decided that the bank was not “authorised to cancel any transaction” on my behalf. She quoted from Clause 16 of the Bank’s own Credit Card T&C’s that states “No dispute of whatever nature between the cardholder and a supplier shall exempt the cardholder from his liability to the bank in respect of payment.” It also stipulated that no dispute between me and a supplier would allow me to instruct the bank to refuse to pay a supplier or to do a charge back. This took the absurdity prize that Absa had already won hands down in its handling of this matter to a new height. “If this is the part of your T&C’s that you are now relying upon why did Absa reverse my payment in the first place,” I asked. “And if I can’t instruct the bank to do charge backs why do you have a whole charge back department?”

April 29: Charmane sent me Dawn Minnaar Team Leader, Issuing Chargebacks' “final response from the Card Division.” Here’s what Minnaar said in her email and my reply with my subsequent comments in brackets. “As stated by the merchant, the cardholder accepted the Terms and Conditions at time of purchase and the goods have been delivered. Due to all the attached information and validity of all the information (this was not true as all the information was definitely not valid as I have shown earlier in this post), we cannot assist further and suggest the cardholder contact the merchant to resolve the issue with them to obtain a refund.” My response to Minnaar was: “Are all my emails being given to the people (at least nine people or more dealt with this at one stage or other - a system tailor made for mistakes) who are taking decisions in this matter because I can’t believe the lies that are being circulated about me in emails by members of Absa’s staff. In your email you state as fact things that are not true. You say I accepted the Terms and Conditions when I never saw them, so I could hardly accept them. That’s how the fraud works. Don’t let the customer see them and then put much higher amounts through his credit card and claim this was according to the Terms and Conditions. How many people would knowingly give an unknown company what was virtually a blank cheque to draw against their credit card? You also say the ‘goods were delivered’ with the only inference being that either my wife or I received them and are denying that ever happened.” I pointed out that the T&C’s referred to weight reducing products when I had ordered ones for skin care. I also gave her links to five websites that mentioned people who had been scammed by what appeared to be the same people.

April 29: Charmaine tells me “The matter will be sent to the Fraud Department.”       

     

When I was at my branch I felt I should give Shona an update on the latest developments. She immediately phoned the Card Division and arranged for my card and my wife’s (her’s is linked to mine) to be cancelled and for new ones to be issued. She did what head office should have done months earlier. Very effectively with just one phone call she stopped the crooks from getting any more money                               from my account.

May 5: Charmaine gave me this encouraging news: “If you do not stop or attempt to stop the transaction Card Division cannot assist and it will be debited against your account again.”

May 5: I told the supplier I had received no product; I didn’t want anything of any kind from it and they were not authorizing to deduct money from my credit card. The surprising reply was that all further shipments to me had been cancelled but there was no mention of amounts already taken off my account.

May 6: In an email addressed to Maria Ramos I sent a copy of the May 5 email mentioned above that I had received from the supplier. I told her: “On  the face of it the crooks have decided that they have milked this cow long enough with the help of Absa Bank  and it’s now time to move on to another sucker. The way this entire case has been handled by Absa’s head office staff has been absolutely shocking. Absa is aiding and abetting crime, hardly a good example especially when it is a sponsor of Businesss Against Crime SA which describes one of its roles as ‘to get business’ own house in order’ by eliminating crime-enabling processes. Well it’s obvious that Absa’s house is far from in order.”

May 7:  Much against the run of play I got an email from Minnaar saying that all four amounts had been credited to my account once again. 

          I decided to pass the details of my experience on to Wendy Lucas-Bull the Chairperson of Barclays Africa in the hope that she would do her best to ensure that no other Absa client gets the same treatment if they get scammed like I did.

          She has been described as the “saviour of banks” after turning an ailing First National Bank around when she was its CEO so I couldn’t have had a better person to contact.

          She got Ian Smith, Head CEO & Specialist Complaints at Barclays Africa, to looking into my complaint. Shona had done the right thing he told me. “We have congratulated her via telephone and a formal note to her line management. Truly appreciate your support and the time taken to acknowledge our staff on a job well done.”  

          THANKS AGAIN SHONA FOR BEING THE BRIGHTEST LIGHT IN YOUR BANK. THANKS FOR KEEPING PERSONAL SERVICE AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ALIVE IN AN AGE WHEN IT HAS ALL BUT BEEN REPLACED BY IMPERSONAL CALL CENTRES AND INEFFICIENCY.

Click here:
Good and Bad Banks

Regards,

          Jon, a long standing Absa Bank client who had every right to anticipate far better treatment from the head office staff.

P.S. As a Consumer Watchdog I can’t always be wide awake especially as I am required to be on guard most of the time. However this has been a valuable eye opening lesson about loyalty - the client can be this to his Bank but he can’t automatically expect to get it in return. 

                                                                                                                                                     

          

Immoral Press apologies & fact or fiction at the Sunday Times

Dear readers,

          Newspapers in South Africa are notorious for the sickening way they deal with apologies as the country’s former cricket captain Greame “Biff” Smith has just found out - firsthand.       

They can blacken somebody’s name by making a story a lot more scandalous than it actually is. Worse still in this technological age it can be picked up by other publications and blogs and in a flash it is all around the world.

You would think that the South African Press Ombudsman Johan Retief was there to stop this kind of injustice. You would be wrong, he’s actually the kingpin in a window dressing charade designed to give the impression that everything is being done to stop the papers publishing lies about people.

 It’s a cosy arrangement that has the press not only policing itself but judging it as well.

 He’s effectively the judge appointed by the Press Council that is set up and paid for by the media to allegedly keep its house in order.

The Smith case, which I believe is typical of a lot of others, revealed how well or badly the system works depending which side you are on.

In 2003 Graeme Smith was at 22 South Africa’s youngest captain of the Proteas as the South African cricket team is called. Last year he shocked the cricketing world by announcing his retirement after representing his country in 117 test matches 109 of these as captain which is a world record. He was also the skipper for 53 tests wins, another world best. A dogged opening batsman he set numerous other records as a player.
         His nickname Biff is derived from Buffel, the Afrikaans word for Buffalo.

          On March 8 in a front page lead loaded with sensationalism the Sunday Times cleaned bowled Biff’s impressive reputation. The story was splashed across the front page under the huge headlines: Divorce by SMS: How Biff lied to his wife – Friends reveal shocking details of Graeme Smith’s secret plans to end marriage.

SMITH AND HIS FAMILY IN HAPPIER TIMES

          This quoted “friends” of Smith’s wife Morgan Deane as having said that he mistakenly sent her an SMS saying he was filing for divorce and that he had lied because he had previously told her he had arranged for them to have marriage counselling.

          The knife was plunged deeper on Page 2 entitled: Biff lied to his wife about secret divorce plan.

          On Page 20 it belittled him further by naming him its Mampara (South African slang for a fool or idiot) of the Week with the heading: Caught in his own slips.

Readers were told “as fact” that Smith had sent the controversial SMS to his wife by mistake as it was meant for his attorney.      

          The posters proclaimed: Greame Smith’s divorce shame.

          At the time the story appeared he issued this statement: “It is disappointing that certain segments of the media have chosen to publish speculation and accusations as regards the means and manner of our marriage breakdown. It is tempting to respond, however other than to deny the accusations that have been published, I have chosen not to comment.”

         

         Subsequently when he appealed to Retief for a review he got a typical newspaper friendly response.

          The Ombudsman directed that the Sunday Times had to “apologise to Smith for stating the allegations (that he advised Deane via SMS that he was getting a divorce, that he lied to her and that he had a secret divorce plan) as fact in headlines, in Twitter and in Mampara of the Week and for suggesting without supporting evidence some wrong-doing on Smith’s part by the wording of the posters – thereby unnecessarily harming his dignity and reputation.”

          He ordered the Sunday Times to print a “short apology on the front page immediately below its masthead containing the words ‘apology’ or ‘apologises’ (or something to that effect) and Smith’s name in the headline.”

          For a press ombudsman his ruling was hardly precise.

          He added that there must be a “full apology on Page 2.” The words “Visit www.presscouncil.org.za for the full finding” had to be at the end of the text and the “full apology” had to be on the Sunday Times website “if the offending headlines were published there as well.”

          Surely Retief could have easily established if the headlines were published on the website.

          As it turned out he let the Sunday Times off the hook almost completely by allowing it to publish a minute apology that was a fraction of the size of the original story. There was nothing on Page 2.

IF YOU CAN SEE IT THE APOLOGY IS ON THE RIGHT
whereas the original story was on the left with an even bigger
headline than the SARS one here

          When I asked him why this was he replied: “The idea was to have a kicker on Page 1, referring to the apology on Page 2.”

          So if he had had his way the apology would not have even been on Page 1.

          “However,” he went on, “the newspaper offered to publish the full apology on Page 1 which made text on Page 2 redundant.”

          What about the offending posters? My bet is that there were never any posters announcing the apology.   

          I asked Retief why the Press Council did not make newspapers print apologies in the same position as the original story and with the same prominence.

          It’s hardly surprising that the Council has that covered in favour of the media with a Complaints Procedure that according to Retief “asks for appropriate prominence.”

          Appropriate for whom? An apology that is a fraction the size of the original story with a tiny heading would I am sure not be “appropriate” in Smith’s eyes.

          The word is defined as being “suitable or proper in the circumstances.” Only Retief and the Sunday Times would agree that the apology in this case complied with this definition.

          In this part of his finding which the Sunday Times readers could only see on the Press Council’s website Retief concluded: “By making a decision that the publication of the headlines/Twitter was unjustified, I am not finding that the allegations made against Smith are false. For all I know they may be true. I simply do not have any evidence to either effect, besides, the Press Ombudsman’s office is not a court of law – it is an institution of ethics. My decision is therefore not a judicial, but rather a journalist one.

          “All I’m saying is that, with the information at the newspaper’s disposal at the time of publication, it was not justified in stating the allegations as fact in the headlines and in the Twitter feed.”

          How ethical is it to allow the paper to get away with such a tiny apology. And if he did not know if the allegations were true or false how could Retief possibly say that he knew what information the Sunday Times had at its “disposal at the time of publication.”

          Retief’s full judgement contained some very confusing statements as well as this odd throw away line: “I have on various occasions stated that the mere fact that an allegation has been made does not by default justify a newspaper to publish it – allegations can be baseless, defamatory and they can cause huge unnecessary harm. Be that as it may.”

          “The report consistently ascribes those allegations to ‘friends,’” he continued. “It is clear that the allegations, whether factually correct or not were the views of people.”

          He referred to Section 4.7 of the Press Code that states: “The dignity or reputation of an individual should be overridden only by a legitimate public interest if the facts reported are true or substantially true.”

          Having concluded that the Sunday Times report was based on allegations from an anonymous source he made no ruling about the report itself even though his own findings showed that it should not have been published at all. This was in spite of the fact that he had “little doubt” that it had “done unnecessary harm” to Smith’s “dignity and reputation.”

          Retief’s admission that his decisions are “journalistic ones” explains exactly why the Press Council has a Constitution that is loaded in favour of the newspapers it claims to police.

          Is it a conscience-salving new twist to have the Council’s web address included in the apology which was a cop out for what should have been a punishment of some significance by being in the paper itself?

          The Press Council is a toothless media lap dog that has only one way of punishing transgressing publications and that is to order them to print the kind of pathetic apology the Sunday Times was told to carry.

          By coincidence the African National Congress (ANC) Government has revived its call for a statutory Media Appeals Tribunal that would be able to fine offending papers and perhaps meet out even harsher sanctions.

          A couple of years ago the papers in the Sunday Times group had Thabo Leshilo a veteran journalist and former editor as their own internal Ombudsman or Public Editor as he was called to act as the readers’ representative..

          He was there when the ANC first mooted the idea of a Media Appeals Tribunal. Possibly because of this he advocated in one of his columns that apologies should be on the same page as the original story and just as prominent.

          “This if followed should go a long way to addressing most of the legitimate criticisms of our newspapers and improve their credibility,” he wrote.

          You can imagine how popular that was. So shortly afterwards he disappeared and was replaced in 2011 by another former editor Joe Latakgomo. He too did not last long and was not replaced when he left.

          The hierarchy at that newspaper group evidently decided that the Press Council was more than enough to contend with, without having its own Ombudsman coming up with embarrassing, reader friendly bright ideas.

          In its quest for reader grabbing sensationalism did the Sunday Times overstep the mark again in its very next edition following the one with the Smith apology. On May 24 its front page lead was headed: Trevor Noah’s family tragedy with the subtitled: Yet another female relative killed.

          The story was about the funeral of South African comedian Noah’s 24 year old cousin who was murdered. Noah and the girl were not close, the paper reported as they lived in different provinces, according to his grandmother, but they knew each other.

          The strangest part of the story was that the paper claimed the girl’s relatives had not yet been able to tell Noah about the girl’s death and the Sunday Times had been unable to contact him for comment as he was abroad.

          It got stranger still when Noah tweeted: 

          He followed this with: 

          Then News 24 reported that the Sunday Times Editor Phylicia Oppelt was standing by her paper’s report while at the same time it claimed to have spoken to Noah’s 88 year old grandmother who rubbished the Sunday story as being completely untrue. 

          Even The Times, the daily in the same stable as the Sunday Times was ominously silent on the subject in the following days.

         

          Now that Noah has really hit the big time by being named the successor to Jon Stewart on the The Daily Show, the American late night TV news satire his name is a huge draw to have in any newspaper headline.

          Could this have been the main motive for the Sunday Times story?

          It will be interesting to see what Retief decides if he gets a complaint about this one.

                                A WEEK LATER ON MAY 31

          Having been quoted earlier as standing by her paper's Noah report of May 24 the Sunday Times Editor Phylicia Oppelt came up with this wishy-washy apology that took up nearly half of Page 4.

        "Clearly we had not delved down into the facts as deeply as we should," she wrote. "On reflection should this story have been offered to readers in the condition that it was? No. 
        "Was it sufficiently weighty to be offered as the main story on our front page? No."
        Nowhere in her long winded explanation of why her paper got it wrong did she mention the one aspect that was the key to getting it right. And that was to get Noah's view before the story was published - one of the basics of good journalism that every cub reporter is taught.
        But when the Sunday Times could not get hold him it couldn't wait to get into print as if this was a world shattering scoop. The result was that Oppelt had egg on her face two weeks running.
        In typical newspaper style the headline for her apology was an innocuous one design to disguise what really happened.
        It would  have been too daring for it to have said something like: Sorry we got our Trevor Noah 'family tragedy' story wrong. Here's how it came about.

          Regards,

          Jon, the Poor Man’s Press Ombudsman, who tells you what the main stream media would rather keep mum about.

HIJACKED BLUE BULLS LOGO USED IN INVESTMENT SCAM

Dear Investors,

         The Blue Bulls logo in a colour newspaper advertisement was the stamp of approval that convinced people that the investment opportunity being offered was kosher.

          It told readers that this was the “Business opportunity of a lifetime” where they could earn a “Phenomenal income.” 

          It was said to involve a product used in the medical and sporting fields that was already “successful in 43 countries.”

          “Our product is approved by the Blue Bulls Rugby Union and other rugby unions and sports bodies will follow shortly,” it claimed.

          The investment required was R140 000.

          The Blue Bulls is one of South Africa’s best known rugby clubs and plays in the Super Rugby tournament under the Vodacom Blue Bulls name.

          “The Blue Bulls logo had a major impact in influencing me to invest,” said Rodney Lauder a retired bank credit manager.

          The ad appeared in the Beeld, the Afrikaans daily newspaper that is said to be the most quoted paper in South Africa.

          There were also others. One in the Sunday Times on 7 October 2012 for instance made this unbelievable claim: “Earn R25 000 passive income every month from January 2013.” The capital required was R250 000. To make it even more enticing this ridiculous return was “Guaranteed or your money back.” 

          Another one in the same paper on 14 October 2012 offered the same incredible income and guarantee on R200 000 with payments beginning in December 2012.

          At the bottom of both these ads was the name of the company The World Loves a Winner (TWLW) with the same telephone number and an address at Hanger 2, Rand Airport, Germiston.

          This Rand Airport address also appeared in the Beeld advertisement and was where the owner of the company, pilot Kevin Pearman had a flight school.

          He left Rand Airport about three years ago and when I asked the airport manager Stuart Coetzee what happened to the flight school he replied: “I can’t tell you. I’m not getting into that.”

PEARMAN

         Pearman has a history of making too good to be true undertakings in advertisements to get people to put money into his various get-rich-quick schemes which don’t produce the promised riches.
 See previous posts.
Telkom drops Pearman
Blog that nobody reads   
Cell C's strange deal
Big business shuns little man
                          

          This Bulls campaign netted him R1.1-million.

          Lauder put in R150 000 and some of the others, one of whom was disabled in a wheel chair, used their pension money, he maintained.

          The others were: Gideon van Zyl, Eddie Mabusela and Razia Hassan R200 000 each; Tony Baker R150 000; William Chauke, Sivanander Pillay and Noko Gnoebe, R50 000 each.

          The money entitled them to become licensees for Heat in a Click (SA) Ltd (HIAC) represented by Jess Cawood, although oddly all the shares were in the name of his wife Johanna Petronella Cawood. It was suppose to have the exclusive South African rights to market the products of the London based Heat in a Click.

          The products were said to consist of a variety of re-usable heating pads to treat muscle and related ailments.

           As the authorised broker Pearman had the investments paid into TWLW’s bank account. This was despite the fact that all the licensing agreements were with Cawood’s company, which gave money back guarantees in the contracts investors signed even though it had not been paid any of it.

          On his heat pad website Pearman stated that a minimum of 50 stands would be placed in shopping malls to sell the product. It showed a picture of a stand that was said to “produced an average profit of R5 000 a day.”

          It went on to say that a net profit per stand was projected to be R150 000 per month and 50% of this would be pooled to be shared equally by the licence holders.

          On this basis if there were only 50 licence holders they would each receive a “passive income of R75 000 per month.”

          Other hard to believe claims on the website included that “over the past few months a feasibility of the product was done here in South Africa by introducing it to a diverse range of potential markets ranging from doctors, school children, vets, maternity wards, physiotherapists, beauty salons, spas and a variety of sportsmen such as rugby players, hunters and fishermen, and this study proved that the product sells itself and that the retail pricing is extremely affordable.”

          “We were never told anything about this and I don’t believe it was ever done,” Lauder told me.

          The investors were not aware that the Bulls club had never authoriZed for its logo to be use in any investment promoting advertisements.

Darryl Kroll, the Club’s brand promoter had this to say when I sent him a copy of the Beeld ad.

          “I’m flabbergasted; we would never have approved that. I cannot believe how unscrupulous and devious people can be. It saddens me.”

          He told me that one of Cawood’s companies was “licensed purely to distribute Bulls branded Heat in a Click packs to retailers in South Africa.”

          “But there was shortfall of the minimum guarantee and they were put in breach once they did not pay.”

          He added that they tried for months to get hold of Cawood to get what they were owed but he seemed to have disappeared. As far as he knew no Bulls heat pads ever got to the market.

        And no stalls were ever put in any malls, according to Lauder.

         Inevitably the investors began complaining that they had not received any of the promised income. The money back guarantees in the agreements they signed were not honour and they soon realised they had lost all their money.

          Pearman and Cawood then accused each other of fraud.   

          “I’m sure they were working together,” said Van Zyl, an IT specialist. “We were told so many lies.”

          However Pearman denied this saying that he was duped by Cawood and that was the reason he laid a fraud charge against him.

This was done at the Germiston Police station, but the prosecutor declined to take it any further as it was regarded as a civil case rather than a criminal one.

          In an affidavit 62 year old Pearman, who lives at 21 Chaucer Avenue, Senderwood, Bedfordview, Johannesburg, stated that on the basis of an agreement he had with Cawood he recruited the investors. Approximately R500 000 went in his expenses and R441 475 was paid into the Absa Bank account of Cawood’s wife.

          On 19 January 2013 he stopped doing business with Cawood and in terms of a termination agreement they both signed Cawood agreed to continue with Heat in a Click in the “best interests of the investors.”

DISGRUNTLED INVESTORS HAVE OPENED THIS FACEBOOK PAGE

          After this he was surprised to learn that Cawood was doing nothing further and in April 2013 he contacted the London Heat in a Click only to be told that they had not given Cawood the sole South African rights and that “this could be a fraudulent scam.”

          In a letter to an Inspector at the Companies and Intellectual Properties Commission, to whom the investors had complained, Cawood’s lawyer Neels Grobler said according to his client Pearman and his company were only mandated to find buyers for the products.

 “At no stage was he given permission to obtained investors and at no stage did Heat in a Click receive the money from the investors,” he wrote. “At no stage did Mr or Mrs Cawood representing Heat in a Click sign any of the investors’ contracts.

“We have appointed our own forensic investigator to investigate charges of fraud against Mr Pearman.”

On 21 January 2013 Pearman sent a circular to the investors saying that “an extremely exciting new avenue has opened up for our sister company which demands our total attention. Consequently from today The World Loves a Winner will no longer handle any responsibilities for Heat in Click.”

He referred them to Cawood and his company HIAC which he maintained was now in full control of the business and “all plans remain exactly the same.”

In a letter to the investors dated 28 February 2013 Pearman told them that although he had ended his relationship with HIAC “we felt morally obliged to ensure that none of the investors loses their investment.”

For this reason he was putting pressure on Jess Cawood to honour his agreement to put stands in shopping centres and to begin marketing the products.

“Rest assured we will make good our promise to liquidate HIAC and appoint a liquidator to manage the business in the sole interest of the investors.”

He stated that his attorney Frik Weldhagen had been instructed to do this immediately after the expiry of seven days unless he got a satisfactory answer from Cawood.

Good hearted Kevin added: “Please be aware that we are instituting this action at our cost on behalf of all investors and will not be seeking any contributions from you.”

But like a lot of Kevin’s promises this never happened. “There was no point in throwing good money after bad,” he told me.

THE FACEBOOK PAGE

He assured me he was not a crook and proof of this was that he had even given one investor their money back towards the end. Asked who this was he could neither name the person nor give me the amount involved.

Eddie Mabusela, who had a small construction business in Pretoria, told me that the loss of his investment affected him “big time.”

“I’m broke,” he said. “I put all my savings into this and they ducked and dived.”

Pearman once told me he has never hurt anyone. I suppose leaving somebody “broke” doesn’t count and taking hundreds of thousands of rand from people, many of whom could ill afford to lose it, doesn’t count either.

Regards,                                                             

Jon, the Consumer Watchdog who stands up
for the less fortunate when nobody else will.                  

                                                                                 

P.S. When Rodney Lauder began complaining that there had been “misappropriation of funds and a total misrepresentation of the business” he started getting anonymous calls on his landline in the middle of the night. Odd that, as I had the same experience (See my post “Blog that nobody reads.”).