Wendy Knowler | A top-10 list I’d rather you didn’t make as a consumer in 2026

Wendy Knowler looks back on some of the most controversial consumer queries she had to deal with in 2025 — with sound advice on how to avoid them.

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This being my last column of 2025, I’ll be highlighting some of the stories of the year that stood out for me.

Such moments of reflection are both appropriate and unavoidable for me, because investigating fresh complaints when just about all the corporate decision-makers are doing festive things and happily ignoring their inboxes is pretty much impossible.

So, the cases that have dropped in my inbox in the past week will have to wait. They include a woman who lost every cent she had in a particularly nasty form of bank fraud; the premium car which suffered engine failure a few months out of warranty but with less than 10 000km on the clock; and the airline which allegedly asked a passenger to pay many thousands for a service that’s available free of charge.

But for now, here’s my look back at the consumer stories I dealt with in 2025.

1. Remain vigilant against vishing

I kicked off the year with a column warning about fraudsters’ tactics, including the number one scam – vishing.

I wrote: “I dare to hope that fewer older people fall for vishing scams this year. That’s when a fraudster calls someone on their cellphone, pretends to be employed by their bank’s fraud division — often with convincing call centre sounds in the background — reels off their account number and banking habits, and then tricks them into giving up their banking passwords and one-time pins.

“And just like that, their retirement savings are gone.”

Sadly, the incidence of vishing has since increased, not decreased.

It’s a major concern of bodies such as the SA Fraud Prevention Service, which late this year launched an awareness campaign with a central piece of advice to those who receive calls from people discussing their accounts, instructing them to download a link or to read out any numbers over the phone: “Just say goodbye.”

2. Don’t just say it — put it in writing

George Nkosi was pursued by debt collectors regarding an Edgars account he believed was closed after he settled the balance and verbally requested that it be closed.

The account, managed by RCS, had remained open and continued to accrue monthly club fees and account protection premiums.

As Nkosi lacked proof of his verbal instruction to close his account — as do many who prefer to transact face-to-face in a store — he technically owed the claimed R1 400 debt, but RCS wrote it off as a “goodwill gesture” after my intervention.

It’s best to email an account cancellation request: That way you have your own proof.

3. Furkid furore

Last festive season, Mischa Buys and her fiancé arrived in Cape Town from Johannesburg on SA Airways (SAA), expecting their beloved long-haired dachshund Dobby to emerge from the hold and be delivered to them.

Ground crew repeatedly assured them “he’ll be here soon”, while the increasingly anxious couple waited for hours, with no sight of their dog.

They later learnt that Dobby had arrived in Cape Town on their flight but was accidentally left aboard the aircraft, and thus flew back to OR Tambo Airport, and spent the night locked in his small carrier without food, water or release.

He was reunited with his owners the next morning. A veterinarian who checked him out later found that he was dehydrated.

SAA’s responses were dismissive and inconsistent: Buys’ pleas to be sent photos of the little dog that night yielded just one — of an apparently empty cage.

Seven weeks later, the airline admitted “human error” by ground crew but in the end offered minimal compensation — the vet bill was paid and the dog’s airfare was refunded.

The couple had been offered an upgrade to business class for their return flight to Jo’burg, but, understandably, they had chosen to forfeit their tickets and re-book on another airline.

4. Your right to an invoice

When the charger for Kyle Wales’ relatively new laptop exploded, he thought it would be a simple Consumer Protection Act warranty claim. But to make that claim on the Lenovo warranty, he needed proof of purchase, which the third-party vendor on Takealot’s site couldn’t provide.

Takealot told Wales it had got no response from the supplier, so it had suspended them from the platform, but said they could do nothing more.

As it happens, the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud is firmly of the view that intermediaries such as Takealot are responsible for ensuring that customers are able to access the full record of their transaction.

In the end, Takealot gave Wales a replacement laptop.

5. Flowers to say sorry

So many emails land in my inbox because a company’s “customer service/care” agents didn’t take the trouble to understand the problem which the customer reported to them. Or they wrongly assume they’ve grasped the issue, based on the experience of other customers.

Case in point, in May, when one of his employees suffered a personal loss, Cape Town businessman Paul Francis ordered a R700 bouquet of flowers to be sent to him via Netflorist.

But what was delivered did not look nearly as big or appealing as the website photo on which he’d based his choice.

When he complained, he was told — twice — that he was indeed sent the correct bouquet and that it would resemble the listing photo when the lilies opened.

That’s when Francis raised the issue with me.

I took it to Netflorist MD Ryan Bacher, who investigated and discovered that a system error had led to a far smaller, discontinued version of Francis’ chosen bouquet being arranged and delivered.

A suitably abundant bouquet was subsequently sent to the grieving employee, free of charge.

6. Not in the terms and conditions

Absa sent SMSes to credit card holders promising a R500 Pick n Pay voucher for avoiding EFT transactions from 27 March to 27 April 2025, with “Ts&Cs apply” tacked on the end.

Samantha Glaister complied but received nothing, learning later that the promotion was actually a raffle and that the voucher giveaway was limited to 10 000 winners. Those details were hidden in undisclosed terms.

She complained, arguing the SMS implied a guaranteed reward. After my intervention, Absa admitted the message was ambiguous, gave Glaister the voucher as a goodwill gesture, and said it would resolve similar queries in the same way.

7. Understand your car repayments

In September, I discovered that in 2023 Nedbank MFC introduced a car finance contract with a twist: initially low car finance repayments escalate over the term of the agreement, up to eight years.

Buyer Tebo Khanya signed what he thought was R6 500 monthly for the full term, but later discovered it increases to R8 737. He admitted not reading the contract properly, but insisted that the finance consultant at the dealership failed to disclose the escalations verbally.

So yes, the amounts are laid out in the agreement, but it does not require the buyer to apply their initials beside each increased amount, which would go some way to avoiding a nasty surprise for the car owner, should the dealership agent have failed to mention it.

Absa and Standard Bank have refused to offer similar plans, saying that the long-term affordability risks outweigh short-term relief, as salary growth rarely matches escalations plus rising living costs.

8. Gambling scourge

Carefully cultivated addicts don’t know how to stop. That’s the reality of gambling, as was the case with Connie, a middle-aged Jo’burg woman.

Fresh out of debt review, and having never gambled, she registered with LottoStar for a radio competition but soon became addicted to online slots. An early R70 000 win fuelled her habit and seven months later she had lost almost R600 000 – money she had sourced from her overdraft, credit cards, and bank loans.

She blamed predatory marketing and a lack of interventions by LottoStar and the banks.

Asked to comment, LottoStar reeled off responsible gambling tools and Standard Bank admitted the need for better monitoring and said it was exploring opt-in gambling blocks.

South Africans’ gambling spend surged by 550% in four years amid rising addiction, especially among youth. Massive, multi-pronged intervention is needed to deal with this national crisis. Let’s hope we see that coming together in 2026.

9. Don’t pay for this insurance

In November, I warned consumers that many online retailers are not playing by the rules – specifically the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA).

Some e-tailers pre-select for their customers a “package protection fee”, implying that without payment of that extra amount, the customer will lose out if their goods arrive damaged or don’t arrive at all. Not so — the CPA states that the retailer is responsible for the package until it is delivered to you.

And a worrying number of online retailers also refuse to take back non-defective goods if they were bought on sale.

The ECTA gives us consumers the benefit of a seven-day cooling-off period if we buy something online, regardless of whether or not it was sold at a discount.

10. Protection even when buying used cars

December turned out to be the month for landmark rulings relating to the selling and financing of cars.

A Supreme Court of Appeal judgment now holds car financing banks accountable for defective vehicles on the grounds that they are both the supplier and the financer of the car.

So we can expect the financers to demand from the dealerships documentary proof of a car’s history and mechanical state before approving an application.

And, finally, the Consumer Tribunal approved a settlement agreement between the Consumer Commission and the country’s largest used-car dealership, WeBuyCars (WBC), in terms of which 31 WBC customers were refunded a total of R3.4 million and several key terms in the company’s sales agreement were found to be in contravention of the CPA and will be suitably amended.

The many used car dealerships across the land which have similarly unfair and unlawful clauses in their contracts — including compelling the customer to buy an after-market motor warranty — would do well to take note and make similar amendments.

All in all, I look forward to car buyers, particularly used car buyers, having a far smoother ride in 2026.

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