Misrepresantion of product

At the beginning of June 2016, I was called by The Holiday Club’s marketing contractor, by the name of Investage 45 (correspondence attached hereto), advising me that my name came up in a lucky draw they were conducting and I need to pay them a visit at their Umhlanga offices, as I qualified for a prize. This, for me was very strange as I did not enter any competition of theirs, and I tried to push them away. They insisted until I succumbed to their requests for me to go to their offices. When I was there, they told me, in order to stand a further chance to win R10 000.00 in cash, they needed my credit card details so that they could match them with their winning numbers. That is how they got hold of my credit card details, and was handed over to their marketing person, by the name of Emmanuel, whom I eventually realized was selling your club membership. He deceived me into signing your agreement, which he misrepresented and advised, my credit card details were to be used to only activate my membership with your club, and nothing would be debited from it. We agreed verbally that I will pay you R8694.00 by cash at the end of August 2016, but to my surprise, I got an sms from my bank statement at the end of July 2016, that a total of R8694.00 was debited from my account on 19/06/2016, which was something we did not agree upon with Emmanuel. The reason I wanted to pay you in cash was because I was not in a good financial situation and my credit card was about to reach its limit, should I use it on such magnitude, and further stated to Emmanuel, I would use my SARS refund to finance the deposit towards your club membership.

Upon noticing I have been duped by your contractor into signing for your club’s membership, I voiced my unhappiness towards Investage 45’s misrepresentation of your product, and wanted to pull out of this whole thing, but was advised by their client service department, I need to pay a cancellation fee(correspondence attached hereto). My question was, how can I be expected to pay for something that was clearly misrepresented to me in the first place, and which I don’t intend using, as there are more nasty surprises that are in store for me. I was told, I signed the contract willingly, and therefore I must pay a cancellation fee. This is clearly ****************, and how many unsuspecting victims are yet going to fall prey of Investage 45’s tricks, while acting on your behalf? I had to secure a loan of R17642.10 in order to pay the cancellation fee over and above the R17642.00 that I was duped by your marketing representative to sign for (a total of R26,336.10). I’m owing my bank the above amount that I have not managed to pay back even the first instalment, as I am in a dire financial situation and on the verge of being handed over to the credit bureau, for non-payment. In other words, I did not pay the above amount of money willingly, but I was trying to avoid being handed over to your lawyers by yourselves. I strongly feel that Emmanuel, Investage 45’s marketing person exploited my lack of knowledge about how the club membership works, and never explained to me in detail the finer details of your lengthy contract, as he was persuading me to sign it and it was signed late in the afternoon, when their offices were about to close. That is how I fell victim of his tricks.

Seeing that I was sinking in debt, I had to seek the services of the Consumer Goods Ombudsman, for them to intervene, in order to settle this issue in an amicable manner. Unfortunately they advised they could not help me but instead I should engage the services of a private lawyer. Right now, I cannot afford a lawyer, and hence my humble appeal for you to intervene and help me.