Claim against car dealership

[Greig Whitton]

I have had a legal office issue a letter of demand. I have been told that generally companies wait until a summons is issued before paying. However, that means I have to pay additional legal fees...

Is there any way of issuing a summons in a personal capacity?

As an alternative to issuing summons and incurring potentially expensive legal fees, you could try reporting the matter to the National Consumer Commission and/or National Consumer Tribunal. I know of at least one case where the National Consumer Tribunal ruled in favour of a consumer and ordered a car dealership to refund her R30,000+ for latent defects that it refused to repair satisfactorily.

Be warned, though: justice is unlikely to be swift (the particular case that I am thinking of took two or three years, if I remember correctly).