OPINIONISTA: Kafka, the bank statement and the cellphone company: A mundane story of a minor modern fraud

This is not a dramatic Shakespearian tale “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Excepting maybe the idiot bit, this is actually the reverse of Macbeth’s famous lament as it’s a tedious tale full of banality and bureaucracy, signifying a heck of a lot.

The contact number provided for “Safeguard” belongs to Premier Growth Group which bloomberg.com reports is a family-owned Durban-based financial services company trading as The Unlimited Group. Their brand pay-off line was “Shifting Lives” but the woman who answered my call was certainly not interested in shifting my life in any positive way.

So, I said in a bewildered voice, I cannot ever kill these things, they live forever, and I have to phone every month after the fraudulent payments are made to get them manually reversed? Yes, was the calm reply, as if this were perfectly logical and … extra weirdness alert … the only way to properly fix this was to close my account and open a new one.

The case number appeared as promised and back to MTN I went. You must have an affidavit, he said coldly. SAPS don’t do affidavits, I said. Yes, they do, he said. The case number should suffice, I said. No, it doesn’t, he said. Cue an uncharacteristic hissy fit that his company had defrauded me and he was making me jump through meaningless hoops to get my money back followed by immediate guilt about this hapless underpaid bloke trapped in seven shades of work life hell listening to my ranting.

Trust me, I have spared you many wearisome byways and detours as I have recounted my draggy tale, but enough already, I hear you scream, with the bromidic, arid, ho-hum, pabulum story. Just tell us what can be done about it.

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