So the story goes like this: I contacted Johan Bornman for the first time in May 2012 to book myself onto the Yellow Saddle Repair and Maintenance course. The first date I had available was for August so I went ahead and paid my deposit of R500. My wife then informed me that we have to attend a wedding over that weekend so I contacted Johan to move it to the October course, which he did. I am entered to do the Isuzu Three Towers Stage race in October and I really wanted to do the course before the race. I sent Johan an email enquiring whether there was any space available on a course before the race, and we could not find a suitable date. I kept in touch with Johan in order to try to find a date before October. Johan sent me an email on the 27th of June that a spot has opened up for the course over the weekend of the 7th/8th of July and I took the spot. 2 days later however I had a financial setback as my wife had an ITB injury and she had to go for physiotherapy. I contacted Johan and told him that I will not be able to attend as I cannot afford the course at that moment in time and asked for him to refund my R500 deposit I paid. This is where things got interesting Johan did not reply to me until the 21st of August. In that time I sent him 3 or 4 emails asking him if he will refund me or if I can use it on a future course without any reply. The reply I eventually got contained the terms and conditions from his website basically saying that he does not refund deposits. He did however compromise and said that I can use my deposit for one of the September courses if I paid the balance before the end of the week. We discussed the possible dates, and eventually I had to sell my entry for the Nissan Trail Seeker Down and Dirty MTB race on the weekend of 1 and 2 September in order to attend the course as no other weekend for the rest of the year suited us both. I went ahead and paid the balance of R2380 in order to book my spot. I received a call from his wife(I think) at 6h50AM on the Saturday morning stating that Johan is really sick and will not be able to present the course anymore. Since I had to drive all the way from Centurion everything was packed and I was ready to go. She stated that Johan will phone me somewhere during the day to discuss possible alternatives. This call never came. I eventually tried to call him, but he did not answer. Eventually I sent an email to the other guys that were supposed to attend the course, asking them if they know anything, and at about 12PM on the Saturday evening one of them replied saying that he got hold of Johan and that we need discuss between ourselves when we want to attend the course. I contacted Johan directly and told him that the rest of my weekends for the year is unavailable and requested a refund. I have at that point in time paid him R2880 in total and I would much rather have that money in my bank account than somebody else’s. Johan simply replied that he does not want to refund me, stating that he has had to reply to dozens of emails and accommodate me for one no-show. That was not the case, as I still have all my email history where I notified him that I will not be able to attend the first course in July anymore. He also stated that this was the first time in his career that he had to cancel a course. Frankly that meant nothing to me. Since he cancelled on me I was looking for a refund. I stated this much to him, and he replied that he will refund me my money but he is keeping my R500 deposit. This I find ridiculous as he did not provide me with any service in the end. He cancelled the course and since we could not find an appropriate date for both of us to reschedule the course, I am under the impression that he has to refund me my total R2880. On Friday morning of last week I received R2330 into my bank account from Johan, and thus he has decided to keep R550 for providing no service to me whatsoever. I do not think this is right!!! If you take money from someone, giving the impression that you will provide them with a service for that money, and then provide nothing in return, you are in effect just stealing that person’s money!!! I have tried to contact him again but he is just ignoring me at the moment. I feel that I have followed all the correct procedures in order to get my refund from Johan, but he clearly feels that he can just do as he pleases!!! He cancelled the course but he clearly does not have any cancelation policy for this in place. According to the CPA he has to provide me with a full refund, since he did not provide the service that was paid for!!! Just thought I would warn everyone before they part with their hard earned money for this course…
