Legal action?

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Knaagdier

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Hello :(

It seems..

That unfortunately my little brother (age 10) found out how to purchase additional mb onto the account, and went on a proverbial mb buying spree to download games with.

Guess what the final bill is?

----R35000!!------

Imagine the shock I get when I got this call. I do not have the money to pay this and I don't know what to do. I'm a student, I can't even afford a laywer, much less can I let my brother get involved (mind you I was extremely miffed at him)

they have sent me a letter of demand for payment.

I was wondering does anyone know what will happen if I fail to pay this?! Will I go to court/get jailed?

I'd appreciate any help or advice anyone can give me.
 
Knaagdier said:
R35000!!
Click to expand...

:eek::eek::eek: OMG

Jeez...what a situation. I'll see what I can find out in terms of options. I think it's rather crap that they don't even send you a mail stating that your account is already reaching say 10K...sheesh...35K is just insane.
 
I know!! :eek::eek::eek: Thats an insane amount of money, especially considering right now I don't even have a job. I've had sleepless nights over this, and the day of 'demand' is the 9th of this month. I'm starting to fall in shambles.

I can mention it to my parents, but my father is an extremely volatile man. It would be even more dangerous to tell him about the situation (he might beat my brother to death with a board):(
 
Thats heavy man :( Have you maybe considered going to other family about it? like aunt,uncle, cousin?
 
I think there may be a situation here that is actually covered in the new credit act, whereby they were not entitled to give you R35 000 in credit, especially seeing as you are an unemployed student.
I am just guessing based on the little bit I know about the new credit act.
 
Basically. My username and pass were stored in mozilla from where i last entered the webiste and my brother got to the 'buy extra bandwidth' option from there and bought so much that it rose to that account. :(

This is why kiddies should stay away from pcs
 
Ouch... if it was me I'd hit him into oblivion, or sell his 10yo ass to pedo's for that R35k!
 
Man sorry to hear mate but IMO whoever is responsible for your brother, your parents or whomever it may be will therefore be responsible. I would definitely get some legal advice. If you cannot afford legal advice maybe call and speak to the CEO or director but who would just kiss away R35k?
Best of luck. :(
 
Surely the service provider has a responsibility as well in this matter? I think Stoke might be right about the National Credit Act. I would say that the onus is on the provider of credit not to allow the customer to spend more than he/she can afford. It appears that they have given you an unlimited line of credit on your account without alerting you that there was an anomaly. They obviously don't have any system in place to pick up irregular usage. I think that could successfully argue that the service provider was negligent here.
 
It is true what was said above. The NCA guards consumers and although I am no expert, I recall that each customer can only be sold products and services for which he was credit-vetted.

I found it also bizarre that iBurst allows you to top-up for that amount - I somehow don't honestly believe the story above. I had a similar situation where I wanted to top-up via account and iBurst restricted me to top-up beyond 9GB. I then had to top-up via credit card.

I don't want to negate your story, but:
- iBurst (at least used to) block account top-ups over 9GB
- You would then have to top-up via credit-card (in which case your bank's fraud-department should have contacted you after some time)
- R 35,000 equates to about 160GB of bandwidth - how on earth are you able to download this amount in a month unnoticed?
 
We have a legal expert (dominic) on this forum and he might be able to give some advice. You could also contact FairDebt or Wendy Knowler at Consumer Watch - Email: [email protected] . The 9th is approaching fast and I think that you need to set things in motion now. I would contact your service provider immediately and make arrangements to go in and discuss this debt with them before they start instituting legal proceedings.
 
Whew! Nasty one. I can't think of any easy answer. Is there a Law Faculty where you study - maybe they have a Legal Aid thing that might help?

If it is your account, and you are old enough to contract, it is your problem to settle.
 
Ozymandias said:
We have a legal expert (dominic) on this forum and he might be able to give some advice. You could also contact FairDebt or Wendy Knowler at Consumer Watch - Email: [email protected] . The 9th is approaching fast and I think that you need to set things in motion now. I would contact your service provider immediately and make arrangements to go in and discuss this debt with them before they start instituting legal proceedings.
Click to expand...

I already PM'ed a link to this thread to dominic.

But don't sit around doing nothing - you will need to take action from your side as legal proceedings can be nasty sometimes...
 
Thank you very much for all the replies. I know its an impossible situation and that its pretty ridiculous. I've contacted iburst several times now, as to where I get responses once or twice, but then suddenly all contact just drops off the face of the earth and I don't hear anything from anyone. I'm going to try and contact the people named above in the thread.

I really, really appreciate the help.

((According to them R35000 bought on equates to 50 gig, though they could not provide me with any kind of list of what it was spent on))
 
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Technically this is not a Credit Agreement, but will become an incidental Credit Agreement. Get hold of any paperwork you have for this account and establish if there are credit limits.
 
Knaagdier said:
Thank you very much for all the replies. I know its an impossible situation and that its pretty ridiculous. I've contacted iburst several times now, as to where I get responses once or twice, but then suddenly all contact just drops off the face of the earth and I don't hear anything from anyone. I'm going to try and contact the people named above in the thread.

I really, really appreciate the help.

((According to them R35000 bought on equates to 50 gig, though they could not provide me with any kind of list of what it was spent on))
Click to expand...

R35000 for 50gb... thats R700 per/GB...
 
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