Routine professional sanitising is hurting your pockets for nothing - Wendy Knowler explains
Overzealous regular sanitising of workplaces and schools is totally unwarranted. You get the coronavirus from breathing, not touching, says top health body, as Consumerwatch’s Wendy Knowler revealed in this week’s show.
Forget what you were told at the start of the pandemic - you are actually very, very unlikely to contract the coronavirus from touching surfaces. The US’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has this month confirmed what scientists have been saying for many months - the chances of getting the virus from surfaces is around 1 in 10,000 contacts.
So you don’t need to be wiping down your groceries when you get back from the supermarket, and if you’re a school or business, you don’t need to spend a fortune on routine professional sanitising or fogging or electrospraying… that’s only necessary if you’ve had a COVID-positive in the past 24 hours.
Wash your hands, wear your mask, and VENTILATE. That’s how you slash your chances of getting COVID-19. So what will it take for the sanitisation industry to stop exploiting consumers’ fears?
Take a listen:
Is hailing a ride costing you extra in bank fees?
Capitec bank is getting a hammering on social media for the international
credit card processing fee it introduced last month.
That’s because it doesn’t only apply when you’re shopping overseas - every time
a Capitec customer hails an Uber or Bolt, or buys something on iTunes or from
Netflix - in fact any purchase from any company, they get charged a
R3 processing fee.
“Definitely not cool, Capitec,” said Ceeces Travel on Twitter. “This is
literally for every Uber or Bolt online payment, it’s insane...”
Capitec responded: “This is a fee (R3) charged for international purchases both successful and unsuccessful transactions, whether it was initiated cross-border from outside SA or locally from within SA.
“This includes your Bolt and Uber rides and Netflix payments.”
But a Capitec spokesman has
since clarified that while the international transaction are applied when their
clients make payments to the likes of Netflix,
Spotify, Bolt and Booking.com, Uber switches its payments locally,
"which means our clients pay no transaction fees when using their
services".
So what are the other banks doing?
Well, none of them are applying that international processing fee to e-hailing
ride payments, but some are charging it when their customers make
payment to the likes of Netflix, Spotify, and booking.com
Contact Wendy
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