I came across a website called www.ziinga.com. Another one of those auction sites but this one looked very promising. I had been on these sites in the past and had won numerous wonderful items in my life. I had a thorough look around and saw that a new visitor gets some first dibs on some amazing prizes so I Bid on a Canon Power Shot Camera and won this item for a mere R134.00.
They requested me to send a copy of my ID, Some utility bill proof of address and a photocopy of my credit card used to purchase said item. I did all this but I photo shop some digits off my card as I am well versed in the mechanics of internet fraud (in fact my previous career was in internet security). After a couple of days I logged into my control panel and noticed the status is now “documents received”. On their terms and conditions it states that the item might take two to four weeks to ship pending approval of documents. This was the second of May...
Here is where the punch in the gut comes in. Today the twenty first of May I logged on and started a chat with one of the Ziinga personal to enquire if everything is ok. I spoke to a person named “Summer “ and was told that it has not been four weeks yet and that it will still be shipped. Smiling at my own impatience, another message popped up saying that they notice I have not yet activated my platinum membership. “Platinum Membership? ”, I asked. “Yes sir, we require you to activate your platinum membership and pay your membership fee before we release the prize.” Stunned I asked what that would be. “R699 monthly”(under a minimum three month binding contract), Summer replied. So hold on they want me to pay R699 plus the R134.00 which I already paid. The camera is worth R600 on bidorbuy.co.za by the way. Now a bit angry I asked Summer if she could please cancel this and just refund my R134 to my credit card. Summer informs me that I have to pay and additional R299 cancellation fee. Do the math here. I spent about an additional R200 this month on credits too just to bid on other items with no success I might add.
Needless to say this has been one of those bad experiences, but then again at no point do they properly explain this. Even looking at the terms and conditions does not make it clear to the user before they pay for their initial “first prize”. Sites like these are attracting more and more attention lately as people flock to them in hope of a bargain. Whether or not this kind of luring is legal or even morally valid I am not quite sure. One thing though, I will be warning newcomers to this site and will be looking into the legalities of this in the next few weeks.
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