WENDY KNOWLER | I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: beware fast-talking telesales people

I’m writing about telesales calls. Again. Not the “how did they get my number; wasn’t the Popi Act supposed to stop these calls?” gripe, valid as that is. What really infuriates me are the “successful” sales calls, the ones in which the target, often an existing client on an “upsell” list, is deemed to have agreed to what was being sold.

Sometimes they don’t realise they’ve agreed to anything because they weren’t specifically asked by the fast-talking sales agent whether they agreed to the product and its cost.

And at the end of the call, if you agree, they have a recording as proof of what was said and agreed to, and you don’t.

And if you request a copy thereof, you often have an uphill battle.

Ideally, consumers should routinely be supplied with the recording, via email, within five days of the call. That’s the cooling-off period we get with direct marketing deals, during which we can cancel without penalty.

I’ve been going on about this for years, but sadly it’s still not a legal requirement.

So cellphone companies still compel customers who request their call recordings to go to one of their branches and listen to it there, as if they are doing them a huge favour. The gall of it!

A few days ago a Finchoice client told me that when he asked for recordings of his calls with the company, a “customer support” person told him in an email: “Please note that you will need to provide us with a court subpoena in order for us to send call recordings.”

What?

Finchoice marketing director Colin Campbell assured me that wasn’t the case.

“Unfortunately that likely stems from a training issue, in that we may require a subpoena from third parties wishing to access any of our data, but this is not required of customers wishing to access their own data, including call recordings. We will be addressing this through refresher training for our support staff.” Good thing, because clearly at least one of them has trouble differentiating between a customer and a “third party”.

In another case, a WesBank client who asked for the recording of a sales call she received from Road Protect on behalf of WesBank in 2018 had no trouble getting it two years later.

Tracy Dunn realised she’d been paying R95 a month for Road Protect — a basket of benefits including tyre discounts and a fine processing service — for more than two years. It added up to R2,565. She didn’t remember being told the benefits came with a cost, she told a WesBank specialist.

Tracy Dunn of Bergvliet, Cape Town, realised she’d been paying R95 a month for Road Protect — a basket of benefits including tyre discounts and a fine processing service — for more than two years.

It added up to R2,565. She didn’t remember being told the benefits came with a cost, she told a WesBank specialist.

So he emailed her the call recording, saying: “I have listened to the recording and the consultant from Road Protect did advise you of the R95 premium.”

Her debit order stopped after that call, but no one at WesBank raised a red flag about the contents of the call or apologised for the way she was misled, much less refunded her money.

So how was she misled?

When the Road Protect agent called her, she immediately asked if it was a sales call, to which he responded: “No, it’s a routine voice recorded call to make sure your details are correctly captured on our side and also to inform you of your WesBank benefits, which have been made available for you from the 1st of March.”

That was misleading right there — it was primarily a sales call. He was calling to sell her a product for which she’d be paying R95 a month on top of her WesBank premium. He dressed up the product on sale as “our way of thanking you for being a loyal client”, which made Dunn think it was a perk.

Crucially, he did not at any point specifically ask her if she agreed to R95 being added to her monthly instalment.

He told her about the benefits and then slipped in a single mention of what it was going to cost her: “Please note that R95 will be added to your WesBank instalment. Your benefits are available to you from 1 March.” Swiftly followed by: “It is our way of thanking you for being a loyal client.”

The price was not mentioned again — no wonder she missed it. At the end of the call he should have made sure Dunn agreed to the product and the cost — something simple and hard to miss, such as: “Do you agree to R95 for Road Protect being added to your WesBank instalment every month?”

That didn’t happen and she missed the fee on her statements for so long, she said, because “it was listed under insurance costs, but hidden among things like fees levies; admin costs etc”.

So I raised the issue with WesBank.

She stated that she wanted to bring this to our attention and ensure that other customers don’t go through the same experience, nothing else. We reassured her that we will look out for these queries and handle them accordingly.

—  WesBank

Regarding why no-one acknowledged Dunn had been horribly misled, much less apologised or offered a refund, WesBank said: “She stated she wanted to bring this to our attention and ensure that other customers don’t go through the same experience, nothing else. We reassured her that we will look out for these queries and handle them accordingly.”

Road Protect stopped selling its product to new WesBank clients in December 2020, but existing debit orders have continued. “Road Protect is still servicing existing customers who have the product until they either cancel the policy or their vehicle asset finance agreement comes to an end,” WesBank said.

So 30,000 people are paying R95 every month on top of their instalment.

I wonder how many of them realise that or are getting any value from their R1,100 a year spend.

If you’ve been a WesBank client since before December 2020 you might want to check your statement.

Dunn has now been refunded that R2,565. And so to the big question: how was that misleading sales script approved?

It wasn’t.

“Road Protect together with WesBank interrogated the process end to end and these calls were even quality controlled,” it said. “Unfortunately, in this instance, the agent did not stick to the script.”

So I asked to see the approved script and WesBank obliged.

It is fine: disclosure is good: “The reason for my call is to inform you of the new WesBank Driva Protect benefits available to you for your car... The ...benefits are available to you for R95. Are you happy to start/activate? The R95 will simply be added to your current instalment for your convenience.”

The agent who called Dunn skipped almost all of the disclosure and probably did so in many other sales calls. Apparently undetected.

Apparently there were quality controls in that outbound call centre and in WesBank, but they failed Dunn horribly. Approving a script is only the beginning. Making sure the agents are sticking to it, and doing something about it when they aren’t, is imperative.

This is the type of thing that gives telesales an appalling reputation.

• 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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