Thorn Tree travel forum

Drive South Africa Buy-Back Scam

Thinking about traveling around Africa in a car and getting it through a buy-back company to avoid the hassle of buying and selling it independently? Not only you may end up putting your life in danger driving what you only thought was a safe vehicle and get stuck with the bill on major repairs for a car you are giving back in a few month, the company may just disappear completely leaving you with an overpriced piece of junk and all the hassles of selling it. Even in a country like South Africa, dealing with a "respectable" company, and having a by-the-book signed contract, you can still end up being scammed out of thousands of dollars.

For our three months trip in Africa, after reading some recommendations on the internet forums, we chose to get a bakkie with buy-back contract from Drive South Africa. When we contacted them about a car, they informed us that a branch of theirs - Twende Overland Services was handling all of their buy-back deals. A buy-back deal, in a nutshell, gives you temporary ownership of a car with the right to drive it through specific countries. The way it works, is that you "buy" a car by paying an overinflated price (in our case $12,000) for a used car (we got a 1997 Toyota Hilux) and upon return of the car after three months you get 70% of your money back. When we signed the papers for our buy-back deal it turned out that on paper we are only leasing the car under these terms and in reality the car remains registered to the company. "That is just making it less complicated" an employee of the company assured us.

Things went wrong from the beginning. We were, of course, responsible for anything that breaks in the car after after a grace period of one week of "ownership" but even before the week was up we had to stop for repairs - the steering wheel freeplay, which was said to have been fixed after a week of sitting and waiting in Cape Town for the car, had almost killed us. We fixed it on our own dime with a promise from the company to get reimbursed when we return.

A busted gear box which needed to be replaced after leaving us stranded in the desert, and a faulty starter which failed one day in the middle of a pride of lions, followed together with a long list of other things. A few month into the trip we got the biggest shock in out automotive adventures - an especially bumpy dirt road left us with a broken leaf-spring. "Of course it broke!" said the mechanic we brought it to, "You have parts of the rear suspension missing!"

As much as we loved our trip, and tried to laugh off our car problems, we couldn't wait to give our disaster on wheels back. The morning before the day of the handover I phoned Twende and reminded of our arrival. "Sure!" they said, "it's right here in the appointment book. You are flying out right after, right? We can drop you off at the airport. Can't wait to see you guys!" The next day we gave the car a proper bath and drove it to where we'd picked it up exactly three month ago – a huge garage with many cars and trucks being ready to be "sold off" and offices full of enthusiastic employees.

Now, the lot, the garage, the offices were all empty and swept clean. The neighbors said the company had moved – no idea where. We phoned the owner, the employees, and the owner's wife. Before, our phone calls and emails had been answered within a minute. Now, it was like all our efforts to get in touch had disappeared into some black hole together with our $8,000 (the 70% of the initial payment that we were supposed to get back upon return of the car). We finally got in touch with Drive South Africa, and, miraculously, they were able to successfully get in touch with Twende on the same number I was trying all day myself. Nevertheless, Andre Van Kets - one of the directors of the company was able to give us a message: "For a very, very good reason" he said, the employees were "instructed not to communicate" with us.

We went to the police to open a criminal case, and then got in touch with some other Twende victims we met on the road, and found out they were even worse off - they've returned before before us and gave back their cars, and now found themselves back home without a chance of ever seeing a penny back. We had already changed our plans, and our schedule was more flexible so we stayed behind to investigate. After, a few weeks of keeping us in the dark the company sent us papers stating that Twende, the buy-back branch of Drive South Afica, has gone bankrupt and they will not be honoring any contracts. "You have the car now," they wrote, "You can put it in you name and do whatever you want with it."

Getting used to be outraged and confused by the company's actions we called, emailed, and visited Drive South Africa's offices asking what was going on, but all they said was sorry folks, stuff happens, you have the car now and you can sell it and get even more money back. Unlikely, given the current economic crisis and the fact the the car couldn't even pass a road worthiness test after we fixed everything we could fix in it. We protested, but that didn't seem to bother Drive South Africa, nor the fact that because of them we were now living in a tent in the back of a hostel in Cape Town because they so very obviously pocketed our money blaming it on some vapor company they'd created.

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I and my husband have been traveling for a long time and this is not the first time we faced similar situations - scams, in this form or another. And what we have also seen is important massages like these being erased by website moderators because the offending company/touroperator have claimed the story is made up by competitors to ruin their good reputation. So if anybody has any doubts about my identity, they can just go to my website-blog HopStopTravel.com see I am who I say I am and get in touch with me through there if needed.

It would be grave injustice to travelers everywhere if a thing like this will go unnoticed.

-S