WENDY KNOWLER | Plastic in pets' mince and the big fat pre-auction car sale lie

Pets' mince — let them eat plastic!

Finding pieces of plastic in the pack of pets’ mince she’d bought was bad enough, but having her concerns dismissed by butchery staff was the last straw for a Food Lovers' customer.

Earlier this month, Marietta van Dyk was appalled to find quite a few pieces of plastic in a pack of pets’ mince bought from Food Lovers in the West Coast Mall.

“I took most of the big pieces out, put them in a bag and went to see the store’s butchery manager,” she told TimesLIVE.

“He laughed and said the product was 'off cuts'.

“And when I explained the situation to the store manager he was also not interested.”

When she questioned the level of quality control applied to the butchery's minced products in general, she says she was told: “Don't buy them then.”

In response to TimesLIVE’s query, a Food Lovers’ spokesperson said some of the group’s stores produced pets' mince from offcuts of the different carcasses that were processed in-store, in an effort to use every part of the carcasses “and to produce a useful product for our pet-owning customers”.

“It’s certainly not meant to contain plastic or any other foreign objects,” she said.

“While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact source of the plastic, it is possible a piece of plastic cling wrap ended up in the lug containing the mix of cuts that was used to produce the pets' mince.

“We do apologise to our customer for the distress that this has caused and for the manner in which her complaint was dealt with by the store,” she said.

“She will be getting an apology from the store and a store voucher.”

All the group’s in-store butchery teams had since received a written reminder of the proper processes which must be followed when producing pets’ mince, to prevent contamination by foreign objects, the spokesperson said.

Van Dyk confirmed she had received vouchers worth R300 and an apology, but only from head office.

Around the same time, Karel van der Molen found a piece of plastic in a pack of beef shin he bought from the Food Lovers in Cape Town’s Willowbridge centre. The response from the butchery staff was far more appropriate — an apology and offer of a replacement pack. Definitely something to watch out for.

The big fat pre-auction car sale lie

Lepaaku of Preto is among many people who thought they were getting an about-to-be-auctioned car at a really good price, but instead, they paid their money to a fraudster.

“I contacted a very well-known auction company — Park Village Auctions — because I was interested in one of the vehicles they had on auction,” he told me.

What he’d actually done is make contact with fraudsters who had cloned Park Ridge Auctions’ website.

“I was informed that by paying a deposit of R15,000 on the Suzuki Dzire, I could stop the car being sold on auction, and then I could test drive it the next day and pay the balance if I was still interested in the deal.”

So he paid that R15,000 and then the fraudsters claimed that there was delay in his money reflecting in their account, and due to that the car was sold.

They agreed to refund his money, but three weeks on, that hasn’t happened, nor will it.

Park Village Auctions is a legitimate company, with a national footprint, auctioning 700 to 1,000 cars a month, most of them bank repossessions.

National vehicle disposal manager Graham van Niekerk said the infiltration of fraudsters was a massive problem in the industry.

“They keep cloning our website, stealing our photos and fooling people into paying deposits on them,” he said.

Some approach would-be auction customers while they are viewing the cars and offer then a “special deal” on a car. All the country’s auction houses are facing the same problem.

A WesBank executive told me recently they’d caught fraudsters taking photos of staff cars parked in a WesBank building, clearly intending to use them as bait in this scam.

The South African Institute of Auctioneers (SAIA) has the following crucial dos and don’ts for potential car buyers.

Never pay money to anyone for a car, unless you have physically and personally viewed and inspected it, and are 100% satisfied with it. Auctioneers never ask for a deposit for viewing purposes; you are only required to pay a refundable deposit to register to bid at the auction. Cars repossessed by banks will only be sold via auction and the same usually applies to liquidations and insolvencies. Financial Institutions never sell the vehicles before an auction.

Insist on an invoice with letterhead and company details, as well as a reference number, should you need to make payment. Verify that you are dealing with the correct and legitimate company by checking the company’s contact details: landline, email and physical address. Google and use Google Maps to check. Do not be tempted to engage in on-the-side pre-auction negotiations — they are not legitimate.

Auctioneers work on instructions received by sellers, such as financial institutions and liquidators, who always require legitimate auctioneers to fetch the highest bid on auction.

Are you sure you know when your car is due for a service?

If you don’t have your car serviced when you’re supposed to, you risk having its warranty cancelled, and any service maintenance plan too.

Most dealerships will allow you a small grace period — a month perhaps, or a few kilometres — but after that, your service plan and possibly your warranty as well will be invalidated.

Rowena contacted me this week, furious at being made to pay for her 2016 hatchback’s 90,000km service despite having taken out a service policy which only expires next month.

“My car has been promptly serviced according to the kilometres driven — that’s how it was explained to me when I bought the car,” she told me.

“I was sold this policy in June 2022 with the understanding of servicing my car when it reached 90,000km and then 105,000km,” she said.

“The car has now done 90,000km and the policy only expires in June, so I refuse to accept this.

“But when I took a look at her service book, the next service was clearly stated in terms of kilometres reached OR a date months later.”

The policy states, “whichever comes first”.

By focusing on her mileage only, she went way over the service interval periods stipulated by the manufacturer, more than once. The service she wants covered now should have been done last June, and it’s written in her service book. So be warned: if you do high mileage, you will need to have your car serviced more often than once a year, and if you do relatively low mileage, you will have to get your car serviced at least every 12 months, regardless of its odometer reading at the time.

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