Ak­ile Si­mon

Sev­er­al peo­ple who took part in the "loy­al­ty pays," "b for life" pro­mo­tion by Peo­ple's Gear and Ac­ces­sories Ltd (PGA Cel­lu­lar) are call­ing on the Fraud Squad and the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs to in­ves­ti­gate the com­pa­ny which seems to have dis­ap­peared in­to thin air. Pa­trons claim they are yet to re­ceive the "free phones" from the com­pa­ny, months af­ter the pro­mo­tion came to an end. The com­pa­ny, they say, can­not be lo­cat­ed. The com­pa­ny al­so al­leged­ly owes tens of thou­sands of ad­ver­tis­ing dol­lars to Ra­dio and TV sta­tions, as well as news­pa­per com­pa­nies. "We stopped all busi­ness trans­ac­tions with PGA in 2008, be­cause they have a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey for us. "It has been a con­stant 'run-around' to get that mon­ey and we have placed the mat­ter in the hands of our debt col­lec­tors," the CEO of one ra­dio sta­tion said.

The T&T Guardian's in­ves­tiga­tive desk de­cid­ed to probe the com­pa­ny af­ter sev­er­al cus­tomers com­plained about get­ting a "run-around" from PGA of­fi­cials. Na­tion­wide search­es were con­duct­ed for the own­er of the com­pa­ny, but up to late yes­ter­day, un­suc­cess­ful­ly. The Com­pa­nies Reg­is­ter at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs Web site has no record of the ex­is­tence of such a busi­ness en­ti­ty.

Dis­ap­pears

The Park Street, Abou­tique Mall, St Au­gus­tine, Wood­brook and Ch­agua­nas out­lets of the com­pa­ny have all been closed down and tele­phone num­bers as­so­ci­at­ed with each out­let no longer func­tion. Phys­i­cal checks were al­so made to each branch, but there was no trace of the pro­pri­etors. Last Wednes­day, the T&T Guardian called two cell­phone num­bers which were print­ed on the pro­mo­tion­al coupon. One of the num­bers, 727-PGA1 (7421), went unan­swered. The oth­er (732-PGA1) was an­swered by a woman. When asked whether she was as­so­ci­at­ed with PGA Cel­lu­lar, the phone went dead. Fur­ther calls to the num­ber went straight to a voice mail which said, "Yea, if you ain't get meh, call meh back nah, if it im­por­tant." A check to PGA's Web site re­vealed it was "un­der con­struc­tion." In­for­ma­tion on PGA's home page in­di­cat­ed the com­pa­ny was es­tab­lished in 2001.

b for Life pro­mo­tion

The pro­mo­tion which took place last Au­gust re­quired par­tic­i­pants to fill out a "loy­al­ty ques­tion­naire" with their per­son­al con­tact in­for­ma­tion. Ac­cord­ing to the coupon, once the ques­tion­naire was com­plet­ed and re­turned to PGA, it en­ti­tled the hold­er to a free bmo­bile top-up of $20 and a free phone. It al­so added that PGA out­lets were sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for the pro­mo­tion, and coupons could be re­deemed on­ly at PGA stores. Up­on sub­mis­sion of the coupon, a "b for life" free phone re­demp­tion vouch­er was is­sued in the hold­er's name as well as the mod­el of the free phone to be col­lect­ed. In or­der to col­lect a free phone, vouch­er- hold­ers were re­quired to use their phones more than 19 times in three months, and top up their new phone with a min­i­mum of $30.

PGA sacked

Cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at TSTT, Camille Sa­landy, said the com­pa­ny took im­me­di­ate steps to dis­so­ci­ate it­self from PGA Cel­lu­lar when it came to light that PGA ran a pro­mo­tion us­ing bmo­bile's name, with­out TSTT's knowl­edge or ap­proval. "The com­pa­ny was alert­ed that a pro­mo­tion was be­ing run by PGA Cel­lu­lar, which did not have pri­or ap­proval," Sa­landy said. "We had no knowl­edge about it (the pro­mo­tion) and an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion was launched. "As a re­sult, the com­pa­ny moved very swift­ly in end­ing its re­la­tion­ship with PGA cel­lu­lar as a deal­er...We dis­so­ci­at­ed our­selves from PGA." Sa­landy said bmo­bile's ter­mi­na­tion as a deal­er with PGA took place some time late last year. "What they (PGA's man­age­ment) did was "out­smart" hun­dreds of cus­tomers by us­ing our name and colour in their pro­mo­tion, sole­ly for their per­son­al gains," is how a source at bmo­bile de­scribed the in­ci­dent.

Fraud Squad ready

De­tec­tives at the Fraud Squad say they were not aware that the com­pa­ny was in­volved in shady ac­tiv­i­ties. An of­fi­cer said peo­ple who were of the opin­ion that they might have been "scammed" or "conned" by the com­pa­ny, could re­port the mat­ter and an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion would be launched. "How­ev­er, the on­ly way we could ini­ti­ate a probe is if a re­port is made to us and we will act on that in­for­ma­tion in an at­tempt to sat­is­fy the mind of the in­for­mant," a po­lice­man at the unit said, dur­ing a brief tele­phone in­ter­view on Fri­day last.