Powerbite claimed the honour of being one of the first Apple-certified pre-owned shops. It allowed customers to trade in older model devices for new versions, and to sell secondhand gadgets for cash.<\/p>\n
The company expanded to two more locations over the last two years and has been selling a variety of smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other gadgets.<\/p>\n
The Powerbite website<\/strong><\/a> now states that it is no longer taking orders and has \u201cstarted the process of applying for business rescue or liquidation\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and will provide further information once we have feedback,\u201d the message states.<\/p>\n Powerbite said it could not issue any refunds or payments \u201cat this moment\u201d and that it had sent all its employees home.<\/p>\n MyBroadband was also contacted by two disgruntled Powerbite customers who had not received their orders or a refund for several weeks.<\/p>\n One of the customers said the business appeared to have been operating on backorders for “quite some time” while being fully aware that they had financial problems.<\/p>\n He claimed the store had continued taking orders until Friday 13 August, before locking their offices, cutting their phone lines, and taking down their website.<\/p>\n His order was worth R13,500, and he believed that with the flood of other complainants, the value of outstanding orders was likely in the hundreds of thousands of rand.<\/p>\n Another customer said she had laid formal complaints about the issue with the National Consumer Commission, the Gauteng Office of Consumer Affairs, and the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC).<\/p>\n \u201cI believe they have done this with full knowledge that they would not be able to honour the orders,\u201d she stated.<\/p>\n The customer also directed MyBroadband to the CIPC\u2019s Bizportal enterprise database, which showed Powerbite registered under four legal entities for each of its stores.<\/p>\n Matthews is listed as the sole director for all of them.<\/p>\n None of the entries showed that Powerbite was in business rescue or was being liquidated at the time of publication.<\/p>\n Bizportal entries showing Powerbite’s registered and reserved legal entities. All of them show Duncan Matthews as sole director.<\/p><\/div>\n Consumer complaints portal Hellopeter<\/a><\/strong> has also been flooded with 1-star reviews between July and August \u2014 a big change from the previous months where reviews were generally positive.<\/p>\n Many users reported receiving the same email in updates on their orders, wherein it apologised for its “horrendous service”.<\/p>\n This time, it claimed it was “rocked by armed robberies” and Covid-19 and thus had to apply for business rescue.<\/p>\n \u201cWe, therefore, cannot process any refunds or send orders out at this moment until the order has been granted,” it stated.<\/p>\n In a post on its Facebook page<\/strong><\/a>, the company also said that its telephone lines were unavailable and advised customers to contact info@powerbite.co.za<\/a><\/strong> for queries.<\/p>\n MyBroadband contacted Powerbite via this email address, and the company confirmed it had been advised to apply for liquidation after considering all other options.<\/p>\n “The application should be filed within this week by our lawyers,” Matthews said.<\/p>\n Matthews also confirmed Powerbite closed down all three of its stores, shuttered its offices, and retrenched 16 employees.<\/p>\n He added the company would use its “limited resources to assist customers who have issues with existing devices as far as possible”.<\/p>\n Lions player Duncan Matthews is the sole director of secondhand tech retailer Powerbite, which says it has entered business rescue after numerous customers complained about undelivered goods and delayed refunds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":310149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49317],"tags":[605,72116,47544,72114,1163,35,72112,51703,59523],"class_list":["post-413130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services","tag-apple","tag-apple-certified","tag-companies-and-intellectual-property-commission-cipc","tag-duncan-matthews","tag-ecommerce","tag-headline","tag-online-cellphone-store","tag-online-stores","tag-powerbite"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413386,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413130\/revisions\/413386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Powerbite-shut-down-headline.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Powerbite-Registration-on-CIPC-new.jpg\")
Now read: The little-known app looters used to pick the best stores to steal from<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"