Joke of the week: Airtime has an expiry date

First printed in the Namibian of 28 March 2013

All of us have at one time or another bought a product and on using the product notice that the expiry date has passed. The expiry date (or shelf life) indicates the length of time that foods, beverages, pharmaceutical drugs, chemicals, and many other perishable items are given before they are considered unsuitable for sale, use, or consumption. This is a way in which consumers are protected from unsafe products, and it provides protection for the seller of the product as the consumer has sufficient information through the printed expiry date.

Now imagine going to the shop and buying a roll of toilet paper. You store the toilet paper and after two months you take it out of its packing to use for what you bought it. Would you not be a little upset if when you start to use the toilet paper it all falls apart while you are using it? When you go to the place you bought it to insist they refund you your money, you might have to sit down a while and breathe deeply when they tell you there is an expiry date on toilet paper. All of us have an expectation that most non-perishable products should last a reasonable time and refuse to allow companies to make or sell inferior products because they have an “expiry date”.

This now brings me to prepaid services. Most of us have become used to having a prepaid metre in our house for water and electricity. The prepaid services are a way for these companies to ensure they get their money. In other words, prepaid takes out the risk of giving people an account and then having to struggle to get your money out of the customer. Prepaid means that the supplier has the money of the customer in their hands – but it does not belong to the supplier until the customer uses the service they paid for. Just as what the company will charge you interest if you have an account that is paid late, these suppliers should give you interest (or more units) the earlier you buy their service.  In my opinion, the companies that sell prepaid service should be selling it cheaper to the cash customers rather than giving cheaper services to people who are buying it on credit.

The word “credit” is translated from the Latin principle of “I believe”. Credit is the trust which a person or company has to be able to give something to another party where the receiving party does not immediately reimburse the debt but promises to do so at a later date. Thus our cellular, electricity and water companies have created a mechanism whereby we give them money (credit) on the understanding they will pay us back later in the service we wish to use. This idea of prepaid services has saved companies lots of money in tracing bad debt, etc and provided them a way to get the money from the consumer before the service is used. I believe this innovation has led to a very profitable business model and a “win-win” situation for both the consumer and the company supplying the service.Now let’s come back to the story of the expiry date.

Imagine this scenario: You purchase the electricity at the prepaid meter and you decide to buy four different credit notes with prepaid electricity. You use three throughout the month to help with your weekly budget and are very well pleased with your savings when you still have one slip of electricity credit left. (Remember this is your money that has not yet been paid in service.) The next month you only buy three more credit notes as you were able to save on your budget and this is your reward. Now let us imagine further that when you use the credit note of the previous month, it does not work. When you enquire at the supplier they inform you that your money has expired. That’s right. The money you have given them has no value any longer to the supplier because you took too long to use the prepaid service. I am sure you will feel the same as the customer who finds out the toilet paper is not doing its job because it expired.I was sitting on the throne this week when I read about the expiry date of the MTC airtime vouchers. I quickly looked up and made sure the toilet paper was not the next thing that would expire.

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ITC Transunion has no legal framework in Namibia

In conclusion the following can be said, consumer protection forms a cardinal part of our law. Most of the time consumers constitute the layman off the street, who is not always aware of what their rights are or what they should be. Once they enter into a credit agreement with a credit grantor it is as if they hand over all their trust and rights over to the credit grantor. For this reason it is not always possible for consumers to realize when they are being trapped into an agreement, which they might not be to their benefit.

It may happen that a consumer takes on more credit agreements than they can afford, and they end up defaulting on payment, in Namibia whenever a consumer defaults on the third to fourth time they are handed over to ITC, a credit bureau that blacklists consumers and restricts them from any other agreements or contracts. The consumer laws and legislation in Namibia is not reformed and up to standard to guarantee a consumer, that in the event of him/her defaulting on payment that proper procedure will be followed before handing them over to the ITC. Currently the legislation that governs consumer protection is the Credit  Agreements Act 75 of 1980, although section 28 provides for consumers right to privacy, there is no provision that governs the procedure to be followed for instance when a consumer defaults on payment or when a credit grantor blacklists a consumer. This is in sharp contrast to the South African position, whose Consumer Protection Act59 clearly states what can be done in instances of defaulting as well as lay out the circumstances in which a consumer is blacklisted. In other words it does not rule out ITC as a whole but it provides for certain guidelines and procedures to be followed so as to not wholly infringe on the rights of the consumer and at the same time balancing the rights of the credit grantor.

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I concede that currently in Namibia there is no procedure in place that regulates ITC, this makes it seem like the Transunion has no legal standing in our law. It has, however, become necessary for Namibia to reform their consumer legislation and consumer protection laws, and put in place as the South Africans procedural
guidelines to follow in instances of extreme default where blacklisting would be justified, because if we should declare ITC illegal, credit grantors would in actual fact have no remedy against a defaulting consumer, and this would render an imbalance of rights.






http://wwwisis.unam.na/theses/boonzaaier2010.pdf

Namibian Laws of 2011

Name	Act No	Date Ascented:	Date Gazetted:	Gazett-Nr:	Description	Act - pdf format
Statistics Act	Act-No: 9 of 2011	02.08.2011	18.08.2011	4777	To provide for the development of the National Statistics System and provide for its components and objectives; to establish the Namibia Statistics Agency and the Board of the Namibia Statistics Agency and provide for their powers and functions; to establish the National Spatial Data Infrastructure and provide for its objectives, to establish the Committee for Spatial Data and provide for its functions; and to provide for incidental matters.	( 302 kb)
Employment Service Act	Act-No: 8 of 2011	14.07.2011	29.07.2011	4764	To provide for the establishment of the National Employment Service; to impose reporting and other obligations on certain employers and institutions; to provide for the licensure and regulation of private employment agencies; and to deal with matters incidental thereto.	( 204 kb)
Income Tax Second Amendment Act	Act-No: 7 of 2011	29.06.2011	14.07.2011	4755	To amend the Income Tax Act, 1981, so as to provide for the registration of a retirement annuity fund under the Pension Funds Act as a further requirement for approval of such fund by the Minister in respect of any year of assessment; and to provide for incidental matters.	( 161 kb)
Inspection of Financial Institution Amendment Act	Act-No: 6 of 2011	26.06.2011	13.07.2011	4753	To amend the Inspection of Financial Institutions Act, 1984, so as to empower the registrar to inspect a person, partnership or company not registered as a financial institution, upon reasonable suspicion, to establish whether or not the business of a financial institution is being carried on; and to provide for incidental matters.	( 159 kb)
Pension Funds Amendment Act	Act-No: 5 of 2011	31.05.2011	14.06.2011	4735	To amend the Pension Funds Act, 1956, so as to empower the Minister to make regulations prescribing the minimum or maximum amount or both the minimum and maximum amounts which a pension fund may invest in or outside Namibia or in particular assets or in particular kinds or categories of assets whether in Namibia or elsewhere, prescribing a framework for the investment of pension fund assets in unlisted investments, authorizing the registrar to grant conditional exemption from certain provisions, and prescribing administrative penalties for contravention or failure to comply with certain regulations; and to provide for incidental matters.	( 168 kb)
Appropriation Act	Act-No: 4 of 2011	31.05.2011	10.06.2011	4733	To appropriate amounts of money to meet the financial requirements of the State during the financial year ending 31 March 2012.	( 171 kb)
Income Tax Amendment Act	Act-No: 3 of 2011	24.05.2011	10.06.2011	4732	To amend the Income Tax Act, 1981, so as to amend the definitions of “person”, “pension”, “preservation fund” and “retirement annuity fund”; to increase the amount which may be commuted for a single tax free payment; to increase the exemption from tax on a lump sum derived on retirement or retrenchment; to delete allowable deductions to mining companies in respect of rehabilitation expenditure; to provide for the administration of withholding tax on interest; to increase the threshold on income tax payable by individuals; to reduce the tax rate payable by non-mining companies; and to provide for incidental matters.	( 159 kb)
Long-term Insurance Act	Act-No: 2 of 2011	24.05.2011	20.06.2011	4731	To amend the Long-term Insurance Act, 1998, so as to empower the Minister to make regulations prescribing the minimum or maximum amount or both the minimum and maximum amounts which a registered insurer or reinsurer may invest in or outside Namibia; authorizing the registrar to grant conditional exemption from certain provisions; and to provide for incidental matters.	( 159 kb)
Animal Health Act	Act-No: 1 of 2011	03.04.2011	20.04.2011	4694	To provide for the prevention, detection and control of animal disease; to provide for the maintenance and improvement of animal health; and to provide for incidental matters.	( 273 kb)