Smarties E

They ****med me.

I received a WhatsApp message with a "Final Demand" threatening to ITC and blacklist me and be red-flagged as a bad payer all over Google if I did not pay them by the end of the day. I had a choice of either paying R2500 for my ad to run another year or R1850 to cancel my contract. When I asked them for proof of this contract, as I was unaware of it, they sent me an advert over 10 years old, and they could not provide me with any contract. They said that it was a verbal contract. When I asked them why I'd not heard from them in 10 years, they said they had been sending me emails and SMSs, but I was not responding. I asked them to please send me proof of the emails to our current email address and copies of the messages they had sent, but threats continued as, according to them, the contract was a verbal one. They could not send me anything besides an old advert with incorrect information—the wrong email address, the incorrect hours of operation, the incorrect logo, etc. All information was info from more than 10 years ago. I was eventually bul**** into paying R1850 to cancel the listing or face the consequences. As a small business owner with no budget to fight with lawyers, I couldn't take a chance. My point of view is that the whole ordeal was *********. Anet, the lady who threatened me with blacklisting, said she has been the debt collector for the company for 12 years already. She said I was the only person unhappy with Business Directory Reg No: 2018/068971/07. I am their only non-payer... "everyone else just pays." I find their "verbal contracts" ********* and unprofessional. Maar ja... I was forced to pay to protect my name and business from blacklisting. The invoice they sent me on WhatsApp at first didn't even have an invoice number on it; then they sent me another one dated 25 November 2025. When I questioned their mistakes, I was told, "Everybody makes mistakes." When I said that this all sounded like a **** and that the person giving her the information was talking K*K, I was told not to use words like that on her phone. Honestly... like k*k is the worst word she'd ever heard. Terrible! Unprofessional! I think I was ****med!