Consumer Hacks with Wendy Knowler
Know your rights as a consumer. ECR’s Consumer Watchdog, Wendy Knowler, is giving us daily consumer tips to help empower you as a consumer. Here are the latest Consumer Hacks with Wendy Knowler.
Never say "yes, that's my debt"
A debt collector phones about an old account you'd forgotten. Before you say a word, work out when you last paid anything on it, or when you last admitted it was yours. If that's more than three years ago, and nobody ever served you with a summons, the debt has…
Check the name on the ticket. Every letter
Brett of Durbanville watched his son be refused boarding at check-in because his surname had been left off his ticket. The travel agency couldn't fix it there and then. Their only option was to buy a new ticket, which meant paying for four more legs at double the original cost…
That “diagnostic fee” has to be flagged first
Kyle of KZN handed in his drone for a quote. He heard nothing for over a week, then discovered it had already been shipped off to a third party for repair. When the invoice came and he said no thanks, he was told he owed them a diagnostic fee. Nobody…
The price on the shelf is the price you pay
Some shops add a fee when you pay by card, or refuse card payments under a certain amount, such as R50. The National Consumer Commission is warning traders, spaza shops in particular, that both are unlawful. Section 23(6) of the Consumer Protection Act says a supplier may not require you…
Too small to fight is not a thing
When a company owes you a few hundred rand and simply stops replying, most people give up. That's what they are banking on. A Cape Town doctor who lost R680 on an undelivered food order went to the National Consumer Commission and was told her amount was too small. It…
Airbags are not the expensive part
Carmakers leave side and curtain airbags out of their base models here because legally they don't have to, not because the airbags cost a fortune. Global NCAP's Alejandro Furas gave me the numbers. A frontal airbag costs a manufacturer roughly 50 US dollars. A side or curtain airbag costs 30…
That airline credit is on a clock
When an airline refunds you into a wallet or a voucher instead of your bank account, that money usually has an expiry date. With Lift it's 12 months. A Cape Town man lost R3 090 that way in July. What stung was that the airline emailed him a statement showing…
The visa nobody warns you about
A South African couple was refused check-in at Auckland airport a few months ago for their flight home. The reason: their layover in Perth on the return leg was longer than eight hours, so Australia's transit-without-visa concession for South African passport holders no longer applied. They'd transited Perth on the…
Which Starlet are you driving?
Toyota quietly replaced the Starlet in September 2025 with a version carrying four extra airbags: side and curtain ones. More than 20 000 of the older two-airbag cars had already been sold here, and a Global NCAP crash test saw it being awarded a shocking zero safety stars. The six-airbag…
Two minutes before you buy a car
Before you buy any new car, go to globalncap.org and check whether that South African model has been crash tested and what it scored. It's free and it takes two minutes. South Africa has no crash test programme of its own. Since 2017 the Automobile Association and Global NCAP have…
Never stop paying the whole bill
If your municipal bill is wrong, dispute it. But keep paying the part you don't dispute. That one move takes away the municipality's lawful grounds to cut off your water or electricity while the dispute drags on, and these disputes drag on for months. Do it properly. Put your dispute…
Shake the sand out
Back from the beach in a hired car? Get the sand out of it before you return it. Nur returned his rental car with sand in the footwells after a family trip to the Drakensberg and was charged R600 extra for a specialist valet. Rental agreements generally allow the company…
Your usual Uber is going away
Uber has retired its UberX option – the go-to for many South Africans, and from this month you have four options. Uber Go is a smaller car at a smaller price, for quick trips around town. Uber Comfort gets you a newer car with extra space, and you can request…
Paying for the privilege
Roderick asked me: "When you have an account with a retailer and it is fully paid up, why do they still debit you with account fees when you have a zero balance? I buy maybe twice a year from this retailer and always pay my account up as quick as…
Pay down the card that's nearest its limit first
Your credit score is not a judgment of you. It's a forecast built from behaviour, and behaviour can change. The thing lenders consider most, after whether you pay on time, is how much of your available credit you're using. TransUnion tells South Africans to worry they’ve used up more than…
Check the stars before you sign
Before you buy a car, look up how it performed in a crash test. Global NCAP has been crash testing cars sold in South Africa for years and the results are free on its website. The gap between models is enormous. Two cars that look alike and cost almost the…
"No refunds" is not the last word
Have you ever booked a photographer, a venue, or an event planner, and then had to cancel? You may well have been told the deposit was non-refundable - end of discussion. The Consumer Protection Act says otherwise. You may cancel an advance booking, and the supplier may keep a reasonable…
Ask what they'll buy it back for
A woman came to me wanting to sell gold coins she'd bought years earlier as an investment. Here's the thing about anything sold to you as an investment that you can hold in your hand: coins, collectibles, memorabilia. There are two prices: what a dealer will sell it to you…
A discount you can't use isn't compensation
When something goes wrong, companies love to offer a voucher or a percentage-off-your-next-purchase as compensation, rather than money. One family was given 25% off future flights by SAA. Generous, until they tried to book and found there was simply no way to apply the discount at the payment stage because…
Cancelled isn't cancelled until they say so in writing
A woman's husband had a stroke seven years ago and hasn't been able to use his phone since. She says the account was closed. The billing carried on anyway. This is the among the most common complaint I get. You phone, someone says they'll cancel it, and nobody does. Months…