TAKE HEED OF THE SA DIRECTORY / WHITE PAGES SCAM
Advertising Regulatory Board (South Africa)
The South African self-regulatory body for advertising content.
TAKE HEED OF THE SA DIRECTORY / WHITE PAGES SCAM
This is a very widespread scam that we receive complaints about almost weekly.
It takes the form of a contract that is made to look, it appears intentionally, like a form requesting information for a directory listing. In the small print is a fee for the listing which 99% of viewers do not see. The company then makes demand for payment, and threatens to take you to court if you do not pay.
We have in the past made rulings stating that this type of practice starts with a misleading ad in the form of the email. However, our decision has little to no effect on the company conducting business in this fraudulent manner.
The problem for us is that our powers are limited – we can remove advertising when someone in the chain is a member or a stakeholder of the ARB. In this case, it is an apparently criminal operation that sends emails directly from their own email. Our decision will not make them voluntarily stop sending misleading emails. But because they send them as mails, it is impossible for us to enforce any decisions, and so we have stopped making them.
Unless they were to voluntarily submit to our jurisdiction, which is unlikely, we would not be able to enforce the decision on their email communications, as we rely on our members and their members to enforce our decisions, and none of them have any control over that company’s email communications.
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We advise people to:
·????????Lodge a charge of fraud with the police;
·????????Get a lawyer to send a cease and desist letter to the scamster;
·????????Report this to the National Consumer Commission.
Please also read this 2021 article by Wendy Knowler which sheds further light on this scam ...
WRHost - Director
5 个月Hi We’ve received several concerns regarding scams involving domains similar to ours, such as "sadirectories.co.za" or "sadirectorys.co.za." Please note that SA Directory (sadirectory.co.za), which I founded in 2022 to offer free business listings, is not associated with these fraudulent activities. We do not charge for our listings. If you receive emails demanding payments for directory services, it is likely a scam. Always verify that communications come from our official domain. To protect yourself, we recommend reporting these scams to the police and the National Consumer Commission. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out at [email protected]. Stay safe, Michael Founder, SA Directory www.sadirectory.co.za
Marketing/Administrative Manager at DBZ Diesel Parts (Since 2003)
8 个月I have asked them to blacklist me and 2 years later I am still able to open accounts ??♀? ?? I have also spammed them with emails asking for proof then they went quiet and 2 years later they come with a new company name now under "Sheriff Collections Department" ... I will spam them nonstop asking for proof, you can bother me so I can bother you as well. ?? Don't want to give me their physical address over the phone, but I am looking at the one that they have put on their so-called invoice where there are also no banking details for one to make payment if we really wanted to be generous ??, maybe because the ITC (actual one) is working hard on blocking all bank accounts that they try to open ?? I wonder if they will ever go away, probably not because they actually get people to pay them ?? I am sorry for all who fell for this ??
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1 年They call our switch board asking me to fill in the form ,as if they wanted us to update on the yellow page book. i did fill in the form and send them back. after a month they send back that form demanding the amount of R15,0000
To enjoy creation and aim to restore and conserve where possible.
1 年They have tried this same trick with our NPO. Luckily we had a Advocate on our Trust. So you can just block their numbers and delete the emails. They can do nothing to you.
Co Owner at Star Sound Productions CC
1 年I received a call today 28.10.23 followed by an SMS that if I do not pay by end of Business today my personal and company's details will be handed over to Credit Bureau for blacklisting and proceedings. This comes from Ubungane Legal Collections with a cell number 0743088169. The call came from 021 137 3480. I was scamed into signing the form from White Pages in 2018 and still regularly get emails and phone calls from various collection agencies. I have ignored all of them and will continue to do so.