Bah! Humbug...

Many things irk me, indeed. And I am usually quite vociferous about them, so you readers already know that. Perhaps it is my British heritage coming out of the woodwork here, but I like to have a little moan and groan now and again. But I find South Africans, white, black, pink and purple, simply have no idea how to complain, and this leads us to being what I think is a terribly exploited country when it comes to consumer goods.

South Africa is a country governed by fat cats. And I’m not just talking about politics. We have allowed big business to make walking a**holes out of us. We are paying far too much for the following:

* Mobile phones
* Fixed line phones
* Electricity
* Supermarket food
* Banking

And those are just the obvious ones. We all know that we pay the highest mobile phone and fixed line phone charges in the world and by the time Eskom is finished with us we will be paying the highest electricity prices in the world. And despite ICASA forcing the cellphone operators to drastically reduce their interconnect fees by next year, I still don’t think that’s good enough.

You could be forgiven for naively thinking that Pick n’ Pay was a distant relative of Tesco in the UK. But I’ve shopped in both shops, and let me tell you where Pick n’ Pay is royally stuffing up. Tesco has a generic brand, a brand which covers just about everything from over-the-counter medicine to chocolates to electronic goods. These products are anything from, I'd estimate, 40 to 75% CHEAPER than the branded product.

This is (stay with me now, South African boys and girls) the whole concept of “we give it to you cheaper because the packaging is cheaper” thing.

So why do we accept Pick n’ Pay’s No-Name brand as being MORE EXPENSIVE than the branded products? And no, it really doesn’t taste any nicer. I have noticed this anomaly on a very wide range of products, from toilet paper to frozen vegetables. Where it is cheaper, it will just be a few cents below the others.

Then Pick n’ Pay has the famous trick of charging you MORE to buy in bulk than to buy the smaller items. Plus they put the bulk item on “special” to make you think it’s cheaper! They should be held accountable for robbing the man on the street for so many years. And it’s not only Pick n’ Pay, to be sure, but they are the ones who are the most blatant and unapologetic about it.

Now on to the banks. I hope that there is a special place in hell reserved for South African bankers. They charge you for everything – including just looking to see how much money you have. They charge you to withdraw money, to deposit money, to write a cheque, to deposit a cheque, to make a transfer, to receive a transfer, to draw a statement, to replace a lost or stolen card, to pay for transactions using your card, and I could go on and on forever.

In the United Kingdom, as bad as the weather is, you don’t pay for banking. Obviously you pay interest and charges on your debts, but that’s just about all. All the things I mentioned above that you have to pay for here in South Africa, are free there. Perhaps that’s why the banks nearly collapsed when we had the economic crash in 2008, because they haven’t spent years and years siphoning money off millions of people who don’t know any better. The South African banks didn’t even bat an eyelid when the recession hit here, because they were too busy sitting in their money tower and diving into the piles of cash like Scrooge MacDuck.

Capitec have recently come out with some ads criticizing their partners in crime peers in the industry for high charges, bad service etc. Their main selling point is that you pay zero fees when you pay for something using your debit card. Whoop-de-do. They still charge for everything else – I’ve seen the charges brochure.

As far as services go, I’ve never seen a country where business is so quick to swallow your money and then laugh at you when you expect good service in return. And don’t even think of asking for a refund – after two hours of listening to elevator music on hold, you’ll just end up having a tantrum like an overgrown 2-year-old because no-one calls you back or answers emails and they’ll still laugh scornfully at you. This is especially true for anything to do with the telecommunications industry.

Perhaps it’s not just a case of the consumer not complaining enough – maybe it’s the media we can place the blame on, for not drawing enough public scrutiny to this matter. And I think we can also blame the people we elected to office for not raising questions and putting pressure on big business on behalf of the ordinary citizen, but on their salaries they can afford to be ripped off.