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Weathering the pandemic has been tough for a number of South Africans, but every now and then someone comes along to make things a little easier.

Shoppers at the PEP store at Marsh and Zietsman streets in Mossel Bay on Wednesday last week were given an unexpected gift by an anonymous benefactor.

The benefactor had originally intended on rewarding staff who had served them at a local restaurant with their choice of goods at the store.

However, upon arrival, reports IOL, they decided to extend the gift to everyone in the store at the time.

PEP Marketing Executive Beyers Van Der Merwe said they then took things even further.

“The donor also went out into the street and encouraged passers-by to come into the store. Understandably, this caused some security issues and the store had to be closed for a while,” Van der Merwe said.

R192 500 in sales were paid for on the day and the balance of R77 500 is being used in the PEP Lay-by Buddy scheme.

The scheme allows people to make a contribution – anything from R20 to a specified amount – towards helping customers pay off their debts at PEP.

PEP will be matching the R77 500 donation and the combined sum will be used to anonymously assist customers to pay off their interest-free lay-bys:

Since the launch of the Lay-by Buddy, which started during lockdown, PEP has contributed R1.5 million towards paying off customers lay-bys and more than R100 000 in donations have come from people wanting to help via online or in-store donations.

A similar incident took place at a Mossel Bay PEP store in December 2019 when a different donor paid off a massive sum of money via Lay-by Buddy vouchers.

Consider this your feelgood Monday story to kick off the week.

[source:iol]