ECR Consumerwatch

Far from it - and I speak from experience. Four years ago, I’d been with the same insurer for 17 years when I decided to do some comparative premium shopping and found out I’d been grossly overpaying.

It may be a smallish sample - Discovery Vitality members - but the way they’ve been driving the past two to three years reveals that Durbanites are the worst drivers.

It’s been a confusing week on the food safety front.. first the police and health officials are raiding foreign owned shops and confiscating their rice, cool drinks and maize meal for being past their best before dates and therefore “dangerous” and a few days later the health minister is on TV telling the nation that there are different kinds of “expiry” dates and actually, shelf-stable foods are still safe to eat after their best-before dates. For a crash course on Use By dates versus Best Before versus Sell By - and why you should care, listen to Wendy and Darren on food date marks.

The Rice Krispies fans are cross, very very cross! Without warning, Kellogg’s totally changed the recipe for those Krispies - and the Coco and Strawberry Pops, too - and consumers are so not loving the so-called new, improved versions. For now, Kellogg’s is just smiling and waving in response. So, what was the cereal maker thinking?

Read labels, the experts say - that’s the only way to make an informed buying choices.

But what if the labels are misleading, as we’ve seen with the recent honey scandal, the fish mislabelling and the gluten-free baked goods which contained predominately wheat flour?

Ecommerce is exploding in South Africa and many people, having had good experiences with local sites, are sampling the delights of overseas-based retail sites. But there is a new pitfall as one consumer's found out the hard way. He's bought three items into SA this year, and now has been told he must go to SARS and apply for an Importers Code. Find out more on the topic here.

Wendy Knowler tackles a new term that's become very relevant today. Find out more on what Pink Tax really is.

In this week's Consumerwatch, Wendy Knowler looks at what rights consumers have after discovering foreign objects in their food. Knowler takes up Samuel's case who found an electrical wire while he was drinking a beer. Unless harm was caused, the company implicated owes you a replacement product - not a massive hamper - or a refund of what you paid. More here...

This week on Consumer Watch, Wendy chats about the 'burning audi' that's making the rounds on social media.

Is RFID “contactless” card theft possible? Wendy Knowler found out.

Whether you know it or not, if you have a credit card, it is most likely an RFID one - that it is it has Radio Frequency ID, the technology which allows you to Tap and Go: place your card on a reader at the till point to pay for something, rather than inserting it and keying in a PIN.