I always get worked up when I get cases about dodgy dealings or outright fraud, but I get particularly outraged when the victims are vulnerable elderly folk.
Two words in Germiston pensioner Zoe Mtwa’s e-mail of last week leapt off the screen at me. She began by saying that at the beginning of the year a woman who she assumed was “from DStv” called her with a “special offer” of two decoders, two remotes and two dishes. “She also said my instalment would reduce from the R499 which I was paying.
“I asked: ‘What’s the catch?’ That woman said: ‘No Mama, there’s no catch, but there’s an amount for airtime that you can pay extra if you want to.’ I told her I buy my own airtime, thinking she was talking about phone airtime.
“At month-end I saw they had debited my account with R160, and it’s written ‘On Air’ and I know nothing about it.” She reversed the debit order, several times, and then came the calls from a debt collecting firm, saying she owes R3,800. “Please help me,” Mtwa said. “I’m a pensioner.”
On Air have also confirmed that since this sale was concluded in March, and they have made changes to their quality processes. The agent who was involved in the incident has been removed from the On Air business.
Ah, On Air. I’m very familiar with those two words. Five years ago MultiChoice appointed On Air to cold-call MultiChoice customers who still had old decoders to “help them upgrade” with a supposedly special deal: a DStv Explora, DStv HD decoder and XtraView installation for R169 per month over 24 months, the two decoders being linked under one subscription.
But the sales script failed to reveal that the old DualView and the new XtraView were worlds apart: DualView allowed subscribers to have one decoder and one subscription, but watch two different DStv channels on two or more different TV sets, each with full PVR capability. What the pricier Explora can’t offer is DualView technology, so when watching the “second” TV, subscribers can’t pause, rewind or fast forward; they can’t watch their favourite shows on Catch-Up; they can’t watch Box Office movies; and they can’t record a show.
Each complaint I got — and there were a lot — I asked MultiChoice to retrieve the call recordings, and, sure enough, there was clear misrepresentation, and as a result, MultiChoice swapped their second, HD decoders for Exploras at no extra cost. I suspected that Mtwa had been on the receiving end of similar misrepresentation. Turns out I was right, though my official response from MultiChoice was careful not to state that outright.
“On Air have accepted full responsibility for the issue and the account write-offs, and the decoders will remain in Ms Mtwa’s possession. In addition, her details have been removed their calling list and no further collections will be done.
“On-Air have also confirmed that since this sale was concluded in March, they have made significant changes to their quality processes. The agent who was involved in the incident has been removed from the On Air business.”
I daresay Mtwa wasn’t the only person who that agent misled about the offer — I hope On Air has taken a listen to all the other people she concluded deals with, with a view to making good on any other dodgy sales.
A couple of weeks ago, I highlighted the case of Marc who had e-mailed to tell me that it was only after his 76-year-old mother died suddenly, in October, that the family discovered, while dealing with her estate, that she’d fallen for a vishing scam.
Vishing is fraud committed via voice. In the form that’s rife at the moment, fraudsters call people pretending to be from their bank’s fraud division and then trick them into reading out their bank details and one-time pins sent to them via SMS.
In Marc’s mother’s case, within a single day they emptied her bank account of R250,000 by means of 88 separate transactions. Though she barely used that account, Marc said, the bank didn’t contact her about that most suspicious activity on a pensioner’s account. The bank had offered the woman’s estate a 50% reimbursement of her losses — and I undertook to report back on the case.
So here’s the report-back: the bank in question is Standard Bank, and this is its response: “After investigation, we can confirm that we did attempt to contact Mrs B to confirm if these transactions were genuine or fraudulent. We attempted to call her and at the same time we sent an SMS requesting her to contact the bank regarding the suspicious transactions.
“She only contacted the bank a day later. Unfortunately, by that stage, the fraudulent transactions were approved. We have decided as a goodwill gesture, taking into account various factors on the part of the bank, to reimburse her account for the loss.”
How sad that I can’t put that response to her, and even sadder that she died not knowing this outcome. She was probably too mortified to tell her children what had happened.
Please have the vishing conversation with your family and friends — you may wonder how anyone falls for it, but when you’re put into a state of panic, you do things you wouldn’t when calm and rational.
The advice is simple — if you get a call from someone claiming to be from your bank’s fraud department, end the call and then phone your bank from a number you’ve saved in your phone, in case that really was your bank calling. Most times it’s not.
GET IN TOUCH: Wendy Knowler specialises in consumer journalism. You can reach her via e-mail: consumer@knowler.co.za or on Twitter: @wendyknowler
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