ABSA and the Saga of Utter Incompetence

Never before have I received, or in this case not received, such utterly abysmal service from a company. I have spent nearly the last 3 months trying without success to resolve an issue regarding OTPs while overseas. I have phoned the customer helpline more times than I care to remember and every time I spoke with an agent, who would assure me the issue had been resolved, I would of course find nothing had been resolved and I would have to begin again with a new agent and re-explain my entire problem. This however was not the worst of it, at least here I had actual people to speak to, *********** people but people nonetheless.

No the real pain had only just begun. After about a month and a half of trying to fix this problem, I eventually uncovered what I thought would be an easy solution. I just need to email RVN4U and they would open a case for me and even better they would contact me. Great! Email sent, contact details given, case number received. Now I just had to wait for the call. And wait I did. After a week of nothing from RVN4U I tried emailing them again just to give them a little reminder that no assistance had been given. The cookie cutter automated reply received. Perfect. More waiting.

In the meantime I had also been in contact with someone working at ABSA whose email signature assured me they were a Customer Care case manager. Imagine my surprise when after replying to their email for further assistance I was met with silence, an empty inbox.

So this continued for some time, about another two weeks in fact. Until one day I actually received a phonecall. I reached for my phone, it stopped ringing almost immediately. "How strange", I thought looking at my screen, "an SA number. Maybe it was ABSA, hopefully they will call back". I placed the phone back in my pocket. A minute later another phone call. I scrambled madly to answer. Once again, the ringing ceased immediately. Frustrated, I held my phone in front of me ready to swipe answer the second I saw the phone call come through. Minutes went by. There I stood, perfectly still, finger poised to answer. "Ding", my phone rang out. My eye twitched, my finger swiped. But this was no call, this was an email from RVN4U. It read, "Kindly note that we have attempted to reach you telephonically on the number below without success." The world around me melted away as I stared, bewildered, at my screen. A single chuckle escaped my lips, and then another until I began laughing hysterically. My laughter mixed with tears as I pounded my hands upon the cold concrete and cursed the very sky above me.

It has been nearly two weeks since that faithful day and after countless emails to try and coax them into calling me again, I am no further than I was nearly 3 months ago.

If any ABSA people actually read this diatribe, please know that your service has been utterly abysmal, needlessly tortuous, physically painful, mentally taxing, and generally speaking pure incompetence. I am so completely disappointed with your, lack of, service. Pathetic.