Cautionary notices on cell upgrades, gap cover and online retailer Raru

In this weekly segment of bite-sized chunks of useful information, consumer champion Wendy Knowler summarises news you can use:

Make sure you ask this question when 'upgrading' your phone contract over the phone

Here’s something I learnt in the past week when investigating the case of an MTN subscriber who upgraded his daughter’s contract via Rewardsco.

He specified that she wanted a white iPhone 14. But a red one was delivered. That was on December 8 and she handed it to an MTN store the same day, as directed by Rewardsco.

Despite the contract’s debit order being activated, the young woman is still without a phone.

The contract has, since my intervention, been cancelled and the debit order deduction refunded. And soon she’ll have a new contract and the phone she wanted.

But here’s what I learnt from MTN about the process.

“When making a sale, the ‘indirect team’ must proactively check that when a customer asks for a specific colour or make, the stock is available.

“If not, the product is placed on a back-order. All of this should be communicated to the customer to ensure the customer has the opportunity to select an alternate device, to avoid a delay.”

So this is the question to ask when you’re taking out a cellphone contract over the phone, given that agents really, really want to seal the deal in that phone conversation: “Is the phone I want, in the colour I want, immediately available?”

Also, it’s a good idea to take control of the conversation, rather than let the agent take charge, racing through their prepared scripts, as they mostly do. Get them to answer direct questions:

• What will I pay per month?
• When will the first debit order be and what extra amounts will be included therein?
• Please confirm the make, model and colour of the handset.
• Over how many months is this contract?

The latest on online retailer Raru

It’s not good news, I’m afraid. There was a time when Raru delivered the goods — electronics, books, video games, music and the like — as promised. But the wheels fell off spectacularly last year.

I took up a couple of cases with Raru during the course of 2022 and both times the complainants were refunded shortly afterwards. But my media queries went unanswered from August as the complaints of “no goods, no refunds” stacked up.

Then came the news of Raru’s pending liquidation.

On Wednesday, Vaughan Ulyate of Cape Town-based attorneys Vaughan Ulyate & Associates told me a liquidation order for Raru had been granted in court on Tuesday and a liquidator had yet to be appointed by the master of the high court.

He said he’d received “50 to 60” e-mails from people who had paid Raru between R600 and R5,000 for goods and not received them.

“Please tell your audience that Raru customers who are owed refunds must write off the money and carry on with their lives. The company is insolvent; there is no money,” he said.

“If they do claim, there is a danger they will be saddled with a portion of the costs of the liquidation.”

This is referred to as the “danger of contribution”; if there aren’t enough funds available to pay all administration expenses, creditors could be made to contribute — pro rata, based on their claim — to settle those costs.

“This is how it goes with companies sometimes,” the attorney said. “It’s risky.”

Indeed — which is why it’s advisable to do all you can to protect yourself when buying online:

• Don’t make a decision based solely on price. Look for a physical address and check it out on Google Maps. It’s a bad sign — and illegal — if there is no physical address.
• If there’s a phone number — and there should be — check that it’s valid and you can actually engage with someone thereon. 
• Check the reviews and see if the company responds on HelloPeter.

Mind the gap: 'Gap cover' is not a catch-all

Many people who have “gap cover” assume it means they can claim therefrom when their medical savings accounts with their medical scheme run out. That’s according to Melody Perotti, healthcare and employee benefits manager at brokers Saint Andrews.

Gap cover is designed to cover the difference between what the medical scheme pays and what the service provider charges for in-hospital procedures or treatments and specified outpatient procedures, she said.

By contrast, the so-called “self-payment gap” occurs when a medical scheme member exhausts his or her medical savings account, usually towards the end of the year.

“Members sometimes think they can claim from their gap policy for normal day-to-day expenses when they are in the self-payment gap,” Perotti said. “Despite having the word ‘gap’ in common, they are completely unconnected.”

• GET IN TOUCH: You can contact Wendy Knowler for advice with your consumer issues via e-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za or on Twitter: @wendyknowler.

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