Parham Berjavaei’s Tru Water, NSW Fair Trading to face off in court

About 120 official complaints so far this year; more than double that in 2020. Now Tru Water and Fair Trading are set to face off in court.

“I feel embarrassed. Everybody is looking at me,” Parham Berjavaei said from the road outside his Sydney home.

Arguably, what he should find more worrying is that his business is one of the most complained about in the state.

In March 2019, Fair Trading made an official public warning against dealing with Tru Water, saying consumers had reported being sold generic products in place of genuine brand-names, supply delays, and being charged a 25 per cent fee on cancellations and returns.

To boot, some said their credit card details were stored and recharged months later.

Parham Berjavaei. Picture: John Grainger

Mr Berjavaei was not in charge of the water filtration business when the public warning was first made.

But he is not exactly a Johnny come lately either, given he has been running the operation since September 2019 and was working there before that.

“I took over this company, and unfortunately there’s a lot of issues which I am trying to get through,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

However, problems continue under his stewardship, with 265 of the complaints against Tru Water coming last year and 118 so far in 2021. In total, there have been more than 600 complaints since 2015.

Last year, following an initial investigation, the consumer protection agency issued two penalty infringement notices against Mr Berjavaei’s company, SPG Consultants Pty Ltd, trading as Tru Water.

The PINs alleged Tru Water had accepted payment but not supplied on time and that it had falsely represented the standard, quality or value of goods. Tru Water elected to dispute the PINS, which totalled $11,000. Court attendance notices are expected to be issued this week.

Mr Berjavaei said he could not comment on the case.

Many Tru Water customers who say they have been left in the lurch are also critical of Fair Trading. Maitland’s Bruce Taylor paid Tru Water more than $120 in May this year. His order did not arrive and his attempts to find out why fell on deaf ears.

So he complained via a Fair Trading Facebook post about Tru Water. The authority replied by sending him a form to complete. This week it said there was no record of the form being submitted. Mr Taylor said he couldn’t find a record of having submitted the form.

“Fair Trading is a paper tiger,” Mr Taylor said, adding that he only got his money returned by initiating a chargeback through his credit card issuer.

A Fair Trading spokeswoman said it was continuing to investigate Tru Water and the public warning remained current.