AS a member of Momentum’s Multiply we pay a premium of R269 per month.
Nowhere in the documents to us has it ever stated it is without VAT and it has not been advertised as such on any of their websites.
It is then assumed that VAT is inclusive, which would mean in January we would have been paying R235.96, excluding VAT.
We realised in January that an extra one cent was being charged and didn’t think too much of it.
With the VAT increase in July our debit order went up to R272.
When I queried as to why there was a big discrepancy I was told it was rounding. Surely this is highly illegal?
Can anyone shed some light on this or can we all just round off?
Cindi Alborough
Forest Hills
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Multiply’s CEO, Zureida Ebrahim, commented:
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to address our Multiply member’s query regarding the increase of her membership fee.
Our employees gave her a number of explanations, but we realise that the communication was not always clear and often very technical.
We have reached out to our member to clarify and to apologise for our poor communication. We welcome the opportunity to clarify this with you as well.
The VAT rate was increased by the Minister of Finance on 21 February and the increase came into effect on 1 April 2018. Multiply had to incorporate this change into the fee that our members pay. Our partners also had to make similar adjustments to their prices.
It is worth noting that in addition to the VAT increase on the membership fee, the Multiply programme is impacted by the VAT increases of certain of our partners as well.
The calculation of the fee increase, while based on the VAT increase of one per cent, may not be exactly equal to a one per cent increase on VAT. Due to the above, as well as some rounding, some clients’ fees have increased slightly more than one per cent and some clients’ fees have increased with less than one per cent.
This increase was communicated to all our members but I do realise that we could have explained the technical details better.
It is also important to note that the pricing of our product is not regulated and is based on the sustainability of the business while adding optimal value to our members. In dealing with the VAT increase, we aimed to minimise the impact on our members as much as possible.
As mentioned above we’ve made contact with our client to explain the above and she has indicated that she now understands.
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