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My son wanted to register his business and came across a company on the Internet called Rapid Business Registrations. They have a very impressive web-site and ask a nominal fee for registering companies as well as amending the details of existing companies. Being one who likes to research before taking things at face value, I went to the one place where I knew I would get an honest review of the business - Hellopeter.com. Well! Very telling indeed. The list of complaints is a very long one with each detailing the nature of the complaint. There are a few "smiley faces" and "good business" ratings but when you go into them there are no comments what-so-ever. The assumption is that these are posted by whoever is running the scam so that the percentage ratio of good to bad is not 100% in favour of bad. In addition to this, they request that you either fax to them or upload your ID and Limited Power of Attorney form directly to their site. This opens all sorts of doors to these people.
I then took it a step further. On their web-site they had a client feedback page where clients could comment on the service received. The comments on this page and the ones in Hellopeter did not add up so I went onto the CIPC web-site which allows you to search for registered companies. Most of the companies were registered but did not furnish any details. I then systematically searched for web-sites belonging to the so-called clients who had commented favourably on the client feedback page and found only a handful. From there I contacted the companies, explained what I was doing and why I was doing it and asked them if Rapid Business Registrations had handled their company registrations. Every single one said no.
Today (May 19, 2014), out of interest sake, I went back to their site and lo and behold - the client feedback page is no longer available. I'm assuming that someone I spoke to must have contacted them about using their company name fraudulently... well, I like to think this anyway.
What perturbs me is that I contacted the National Consumer Council and I won't go into detail surrounding the call but the basic gist of it was that there was nothing they could do as businesses like these are shut down overnight and start up again the next morning. The gentleman did however take my name and contact number, told me he would let his superior know and that the business name would be flagged but I seriously doubt this as it would take some effort on his part and given his attitude on the phone we’ll see snow in Durban before the company name is flagged. The thing is that this particular business has a physical address and has been operating for quite some time. I have just called the 0861 number featured on their Contact Us page, got hold of a woman and asked her to confirm her address as I wanted to drop some documents off and she confirmed both addresses are operational. I went into Hellopeter today as well and there are a further two complaints, one dated today.
As I've said, I was not personally impacted by this but could have been. So, if the National Consumer Commission can't do anything about this, who can? I'm feeling very disillusioned at the moment as a consumer who this commission is supposed to protect.
