G'day everyone

I received a letter from a business in South Africa (related to money that I owe them) and it all appears very legitimate, but I would like to verify the contact details of that business so that I can phone them and verify the banking details.

I know that I was able to do a business search on the old CIPRO web site, which gave the address and (I think) also the phone number of the business, but I have no idea how to do the same thing on the new CIPC web site. Phoning the CIPC is a nightmare -- you finally get to the option you wanted after 5 minutes of menus, and then you get the "high call volume" message with no indication of whether that means minutes or hours. And I'm not even sure if the call centre agents will be able to supply me with that information.

So, how does one tell if a company is a truly registered company in South Africa? I've got the company name and registration number in the letter I received, but googling for it gets me no results (which, I admit, is not surprising, since such a search rarely works with South African companies anyway).

Thanks
Samuel (currently abroad)