An aggrieved Fin24 reader told the website “hundreds of people have been cheated out of their money.
The group behind the alleged scam is Satinsky Group of Companies, which runs the Drive Car Sales business. In a plea to warn people “thinking of taking these cars” to be careful, the reader who is a client of Satinsky says the only thing she can do is to prevent any furhter false advertising.
The two optionson Satinsky websites Drive a New Car and New Cars from R699 a Month for motorists to act as advertising service providers are Earn While You Drive and Earn While You Own. The Earn While You Drive option is where the client is rewarded on a kilometre exposure rate. “You have to submit five photos every month as well as your kilometres [covered] on their site and you get paid for the more kilometres you do,” the user said.
“The more kilometres you do in the month, the more they pay you out. Clients who drive more than 2000km per month will receive the full advertising fee. The second option is Earn While You Own, where clients receive R570 for a minimum mileage of 500km if they provide two pictures as proof. Clients also receive R3000 on every car sold on the unique code of the car.
It was first suspected Satinsky changed Earn While You Drive contracts to Earn While You Own contracts without consent from clients. Drivers of these cars now claim they only received R570 at the end of March instead of the R1021 they were supposed to earn. Furthermore, with the announcement that the agreement with Blue Lakes Trading and Promotions Ltd is terminated, clients were not paid for July.
She wrote: “None of us agreed to the change as they are supposed to call you and have a voice telephone agreement. So they are on (sic) breach of contract.” According to a recent statement on Satinsky’s website, Blue Lakes Trading and Promotions Ltd will be replaced by Accelerator Rewards PTY (ltd)(sic). This is a more “suitable alternative offering” for their “valued customer”.
But not everyboy is unhappy. While some clients complain about these issues, moneyweb.co.za says some people are making thousands.Moneyweb says while hellopeter.com and even the group’s own Facebook page are littered with concerns and complaints from customers there are some people who are making big bucks.
Complaints range from struggling to upload photographs as proof of kilometres with the website being congested and not being able to contact Drive Car Sales but on the flip side some others have set up their own websites and are aggressively advertising their unique codes, raking in thousands per month. Vladimir Dyulgerov has one of these websites. He even registered a company: Drive a NEW car TM PTY Ltd with registration number: 2013/013838/07. “Last month I earned nearly R70 000, the month before only about R12 000, the month before that R108 000… it goes on. I have had my car since November 2011,” he told Moneyweb.
The use of the Accelerator Rewards App offers a system of rewards for successful referrals. This means a word-of-mouth referral sent by client that becomes a successful sale will link the reward back to the client. The website further stated clients no longer have to drive a required amount of kilometres for advertising or load monthly photos, enabling clients to “save substantially every month”.
About 500 aggrieved clients have voiced their concerns on the Facebook group, ‘I have been done in by Drive a New Car from R699 per month’. Clients complain that they have not been paid and are taking steps to remove stickers from their cars to stop the false advertising. There are also numerous complaints on the Hello Peter website ranging from a breach of contract, poor billing systems, false advertising and poor service.
The user also complained about not receiving responses after contacting the Satinsky Help Desk.This has ended up being a greater expense for clients than they expected. “I am now paying the bank more for the car every month as they are cheating me out of money,” wrote the user. “We are now left with debt that we didn’t budget for”.
Clients fear they will lose their cars because they cannot afford to pay for them. Satinsky did not provide clients with copies of their signed contracts. Satinsky made applications to the bank on behalf of the clients, raising questions of possible misrepresentation in contracts.