Consumer Hacks with Wendy Knowler

Summer's on its way, and so is a lot more aircon use. Australia's consumer organisation CHOICE says your aircon should be set no more than 8°C cooler than it is outside. So on a 32°C day, set it to 24°C. According to CHOICE, every degree cooler than that adds about 10% to your running costs. A clogged filter can push energy use up by another 5 to 15%. So, check your weather app, set your aircon to...

You pay by card, your phone pings with a notification from your bank confirming the payment, but the cashier says it didn't go through and asks you to pay again. Who's right? Generally, the shop's card machine. Sometimes the bank's approval doesn't reach the machine because of a timeout or network glitch, so the machine declines the transaction, and your bank should then reverse that first payment...

Having an operation? Then ask this before you go under: when is my post-op check-up, and will I pay for it? According to the Council for Medical Schemes, a surgeon's fee for an operation includes normal after-care for one month. So follow-up consultations within that month shouldn't cost you anything. One listener says a surgeon’s practice booked her first post-op consultation for eight weeks afte...

When a company asks for your bank statement as proof of address, all it needs is the top bit: your name and address. Yet a Cape Town man trying to buy a car from We Buy Cars was told his statement would only be accepted if at least seven transactions were visible. We Buy Cars says that's not company policy, and has corrected the branch. By law, companies may only collect personal information that'...

A woman was excited to hear she was a potential winner in a competition after buying the qualifying products. But during verification, the company found she'd bought them through an online marketplace, and that disqualified her. She asked to be shown where the rules excluded that platform, and when she wasn't satisfied, she went to the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud. But the rules did expressly...

When you sell, your bond has to be cancelled. A buyer can't take ownership while your bank still has a claim over the property. But this is what catches people out. If you haven't given your bank three months' written notice that you intend to settle, it can charge you up to 90 days' interest on what you still owe. On a million rand outstanding, that's around R25 000. Give the full 90 days’ notice...

Two thirds of us don't have a will. That’s what emerged from legal insurance company LAW FOR ALL’s recent survey of 1800 South Africans. And plenty of us are wrong about what happens next. Four in ten believe a spouse automatically inherits everything. Not so. Without a valid will, the Intestate Succession Act decides, according to a set formula, and if there are children, your spouse could be sha...

A listener imported a car radio and got a R412 bill from the clearing agent. Car radios are duty-free, he says, so what's this for? Here's the thing. Duty-free refers to one line in the SARS tariff book. Car radios also sit in a category which attracts a 9% ad valorem excise duty, the luxury tax. Then VAT of 15% is charged on the value of the goods plus 10%, plus any duty. And the agent's own clea...

A security company employee reverses into your stationary car in his response vehicle and admits fault. Surely the company or its insurers should pay for the repairs, not your own insurer? That instinct has cost a Durban pensioner six months and half the repair bill. She lodged a claim with her insurer, her car was assessed and approved for repairs, but she was advised by her broker to withdraw it...

A woman bought a car from a private seller six months ago. It has given her serious trouble ever since, and the seller's answer is one word: voetstoots. He's right. Voetstoots means "as is", or “with all faults” and it means no recourse. The Consumer Protection Act protects you when you buy from a dealer, or anyone else selling cars in the ordinary course of business. It does not apply to a privat...

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 probably prescribed. Credit cards, personal loans, clothing accounts, cellphone contracts - Section 126B of the National Credit Act makes...

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. The replacement tickets came to R47 566,80. Three weeks later he got R23 304 back of the original R29 604, after the agen...

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 had mentioned a fee when he handed the drone over. The Consumer Protection Act is clear. A repairer can't charge you for assessing your goods, or for...

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 to pay a price higher than the displayed price. And the merchant agreement retailers sign with the bank that su...

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 isn't too small for the Consumer Goods and Services Ombud, which handles retail and services complaints, costs you nothing and can...

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 to 40 euros. That's under a thousand rand a side, on a car selling for more than R200 000. And side impacts...

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 that that R3090 available on 14 July. The funds had actually expired in June, and the airline later said that email was sent in error. They...

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 way over with no visa at all, because their stop was shorter. Getting home cost the...

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 model currently on sale was later crash tested and awarded four stars in early September. The two look the sam...

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 been buying our cars off dealership floors and shipping them to Germany to be crashed, and close to 30 South African m...

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 in writing, keep every reference number, and check that your account has been formally flagged as disputed. And whe...

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 to charge a cleaning fee when a car comes back needing more than a standard wash, and sand is almost a guaranteed trigger. And h...

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 a quiet drive. Uber Black is premium vehicles and "top-tier" drivers, but a longer wait. Uber Reserve lets you book up to 90 days ahead at a...

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 possible. Is this normal practice? Is it ethical?" It's normal, and it's perfectly legal. The National Credit Act allows stores which offer their custome...

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 about 35% of their credit limit. A card sitting permanently near its limit signals financial strain, even when...