Pensioners being taken advantage of

In August 2022, my mother who is a pensioner, took some of her pension and bought herself a Lalela Inverter from your Woodlands branch. During the following months, load shedding decreased and we had a period where there was no/limited load shedding.

In November 2022, my mother notified me that the Lalela had started to beep within 2 hours of load shedding kicking in. I took the Inverter and used it in my TV room and found that after approximately 75 minutes that the battery had started to drain.

In December 2022 we took the Inverter into the Woodlands branch to have the item sent away and checked. We received a call that the Inverter was ready and we collected this in January. When we returned home we charged the battery again and when loadshedding kicked in the system only lasted for 10 minutes. We again returned the inverter to the Woodlands branch.

While we were standing there, the manager called Lalela and a gentleman asked to speak to me. He told me that they had replaced the battery with a reconditioned battery as the old one had used the 120 cycles as per its capacity. I told him that this is impossible and that I would not be accepting this.

After this we received a mail again informing us that the battery had depleted its 120 cycles in the 4 months that it was used. This is impossible as we would have had to discharge the battery 100% for 4 months to have this result, which is not the case.

My mother only has the following items plugged into her Inverter permanently: 1 x Wi-Fi Booster hardly uses any electricity. 1 x 55” LED Tv, only used at night no longer than 2 hours of Load shedding. This also uses hardly any power. 1 x cell phone charger

We have on various occasions asked, via e-mail, that management make contact with us to address the situation. These mails have gone unanswered and therefor my post on Social Media.

Is it standard procedure for Builders SA to take money from pensioners and not care about customer service after? It is April, 4 months after the Inverter was brought in and still we are without the Inverter an are yet to receive a call from Management.

My e-mails were addressed to: *** and *** without any answer or feedback.

I will not accept the explanation that the battery’s cycles have been depleted and that a recycled battery would be installed. This would mean that the Inverter actually cost my mother R1 400.00 per month to run the 3 items mentioned above.