Sowetan Consumer has received a flurry of complaints regarding R150,000 warranty claims that Cartrack rejected on the grounds that the affected clients failed to call every three months to check that their vehicle trackers were in working order.
More than a dozen aggrieved Cartrack customers have written to us over the past two weeks to voice their frustrations over rejected claims after their tracker-fitted cars were either stolen or hijacked and could not be recovered despite having tracking devices.
Cartracker offers a limited recovery warranty that promises up to R150,000 compensation if a stolen vehicle cannot be recovered.
However, one of the requirements to get it is that customers have to call the company every three months to check if their tracker is in good condition; failure to do so means they automatically forfeit the compensation.
This requirement is at the centre of many customers’ complaints, with some claiming it is a burden for customers to be expected to contact the company for a device it legally owns. Others complain that Cartrack’s own record-keeping of logged calls is poor.
The complaints we received were triggered by the story of Nicholas Thwala, whose warranty claim was initially rejected. But the company withdrew its decision when Sowetan Consumer intervened and questioned the fairness of the requirement. Thwala has since received his compensation.
However, some Cartrack customers are aggrieved because their claims have not been as successful as Thwala’s. Sowetan sent the company a sample of four complaints.
In one of them, Aulben Apollis and his son said they were hijacked at gunpoint in Mamelodi, Tshwane, last month, and the perpetrators took their wallets, cellphones, bakkie, gun and equipment in the vehicle. He said he called Cartrack within 10 minutes of the incident, but the vehicle was not recovered.
“We logged a claim with Cartrack, and within 48 hours it was declined on the grounds that we did not call them every three months to check the tracker. Please, can you assist to get my money from these scammers,” Apollis said.
In another case, David Mogatusi’s vehicle was stolen in February and never recovered. His warranty was also declined. He claims the company could only verify two test calls he had made since the inception of his account in September 2023, which he denied. He asked the company to run a verification on his cellphone applications.
“I can therefore confirm that the investigation was inconclusive as my Cartrack app was not verified, and they did not check if I did test/check for the unit in the past months with them.
“It is disingenuous for Cartrack to rely only on telephone contact with them when they could have generated a convenient system that one can simply log in and check if the unit is working,” Mogatusi said.
In their response to the complaints sent to them, Cartrack maintained that the aggrieved car owners did not meet the requirement of asking it to test the device every three months.
Cartrack spokesperson Lauren Human said the purpose of the warranty is to reward customers who assist them in minimising the risk of the non-recovery of a stolen vehicle.
“We are not an insurance company and only reward customers who comply with our terms and conditions,” she said. “Customers are requested to periodically test their tracking devices as they are best positioned to know the operational status of their vehicles. At times, vehicles may be unconnected to our [data storage] cloud for extended periods for reasons beyond our control.
“When a vehicle is out of network coverage, preventing us from contacting the tracking device, we will not know whether there is a technical issue. This requirement is therefore critical for us to establish whether uncontactable vehicles are due to [poor] coverage or another cause,” Human said.
Phetho Ntaba, spokesperson for the National Consumer Commission, said they were investigating Cartrack’s conduct and encouraged unhappy consumers to contact her office for intervention.
“The NCC’s investigation into Cartrack is at an advanced stage and will provide an update at an appropriate time. The NCC is also looking into the conduct of another tracking company,” Ntaba said.
The NCC can be contacted on www.thencc.org.za or inquiries@thencc.org.za or by telephone at 012-065-1940.
Sowetan
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