”R699” car owners go to court for car justice
When something sweet turns very sour – that’s what’s happening with the ”R699″ car case. We’ve told you about the R699 car business that many alleged to be a sort of ”scam”, well now the unhappy car clients are heading to court!
The legal team’s aim is to ask that all credit agreements made under the R699 scheme be declared void, and that the vehicles be returned to the banks.
One of the many, many cases:
A Port Elizabeth resident bought his Tata Indica from Satinsky in November 2013. It was financed by Absa on a no-deposit deal, over six years, with a monthly instalment of R2500. As a contract worker he travels 70km a day to and from work, which made the Satinsky deal – the higher the mileage the bigger the advertising fee – seem ideal. But the monthly advertising fee he was paid – initially R1400 – dropped to R570 in March, despite the fact that he continued to provide proof of his high mileage. And then in July, he wasn’t paid a cent. These are just one of the thousands of cases of what is seen as fraud.
The National Credit Act states that a credit agreement is reckless if the bank either failed to assess a consumer’s financial position, or approved a credit application “despite the fact that the preponderance of information available to the credit provider indicated that the consumer did not generally understand the risks, costs or obligations of the agreement”, or despite the fact that entering into it would make the consumer over-indebted. If a credit agreement is deemed reckless, a court may set aside “all or part of the consumer’s rights and obligations under that agreement”.
This whole debacle has turned into one big mess, for which the Satinsky group might deserve to be sued. Most of these people earn a salary between R5 000 and R12 000 per month, which means a lot of them could now be financially desperate. A lot of people also claim that their bank documents have been tampered with, and even though their signatures appear on some statements, they claim to have never have signed those forms.
The coming hearing opens up the possibility that class action could be taken against the banks that supported the scheme launched in 2008 by Andre Venter, the CEO of the Satinsky Group.
(Source: IOL Motoring and ENCA News)