ABSA BANK - not a good bank to trust with all your finances!

I would like to start with COVIT-19. I am sure that most people can relate to having suffering losses due to the pandemic and some might think they have lost more than others until we hear someone else's story. In 2019 I took my entire pension and invested it in a profitable business, an ECD Centre. Everything would have been fine but just after being in business for a year, COVIT-19 struck. Businesses was closed and we were in lockdown. Just before lockdown came into effect I approached ABSA bank for a personal loan. I already had a personal loan and a credit card with them and wanted to do some debt consolidation by taking a loan that would cover the balance of my personal loan as well as the credit card. If I was able to close the credit card and settle the old loan and the new loan's payment would have been less than what I am currently paying for the old loan plus the credit card. ABSA declined my application. Their reason was that due to the fact that I was self employed I need to provide them with 2 years financial statements but I was unable to provide them with this as my business wasn't 2 years old yet. With my business closed and no income I tried my best to keep afloat. Government announced relief for SMME's and one option was a government guaranteed loan and this would be done through your bank. So once again I was off to ABSA to see my business banking broker. He also wanted financial statements which I could not provide and thus did not qualify. The banks announced payment breaks and ABSA also offered me a payment break but this was granted after they deducted an instalment for my personal loan for which I didn't have a debit order attached to this account, leaving me with no money in the account. I was unable to meet most of my commitments. Months later when government announced that we could go back and get our centres ready to open, I needed funds as I now had to purchase sanitizers, disinfectant and PPE equipment. I again approached ABSA, first my business broker and he turned me down. The business wasn't showing a profit. He said that maybe we could look at something in the new year. I again tried my personal broker for a loan and again, I was turned down, same reason as before. I was so disappointed and I said to her that I have 7 products/ investments in ABSA. I have never skipped a payment and I believed that surely there was something that they could do to assist me. My whole future depended on reopening the ECD. She even suggested I tried getting a loan from companies like RCS. My payment break was also over and I was expected to make a payment soon. Without funding, I would not be able to open and how would I then be able to pay my debt? I eventually managed to get a small loan and this was only to cover my staff with a 50% salary and the rest was to purchase the PPE equipment needed for opening. The money was paid into my ABSA account and stupid me left it in the account so that I could make up the salaries and go an purchase what we needed and the next morning ABSA deducted their instalment for the personal loan and bearing in mind I did not have a debit order for it. The money that was supposed to help me restart my business was no longer there. I later managed to get together some money and my brilliant staff assisted and agreed to work without pay. Now for this few months we have been operating but at 40% of the total capacity and this means that whatever earnings I get is just to sustain the business. There is no profits as whatever I get in goes towards the running of the business and this is not even including the rates which is now 12 months in arrears. Now ABSA have decided to hand over my accounts for collection. All my efforts to explain my predicament is not even considered. This guy called me and demanded I pay R9000.00 buy the end of the day or the next day for the latest. He threatened me and raised his voice and this upset me to such an extent that I ended the call. So, today, I am sitting here writing this review. I am bitter and angry. The BANK that meant so much to me have broken my good credit record, have placed me in a position of disposition and all this is also affecting my health. At this point I would also like to mention that I am 2 months in arrears. I have 2 small children at school, I cannot pay their school funds or get them a proper uniform as their clothes are too small. Our rates of our house is also in arrears. Most of my policies have lapsed and I am trying to get it reinstated. We don't have much food and I improvise where I can. Most of the time I have to tell my children not to eat up all the bread, we have to save some for later. This is extremely difficult for me. We were and average family that could afford some of the nice things in life and now we have been reduced to handouts. I am sure that there are many people out there that is in similar situations. This series of events have led to me going into depression. The daily SMS's and constant calls, some threatening, from the Bank that I valued the most. This have completely broken down the trust I had in ABSA. I will slowly rebuild my life and eventually repay ABSA but I will never deal with ABSA again. Try sending their customer services an email, if you don't respond within the timeframe set by them, your complaint is closed. In conclusion, all I would like to say, "if this is how ABSA treats a customer that have been banking with them for years and never missed a payment, what they themselves labelled as a good customer, then I wouldn't like to know how they would treat their so called BAD customers" signed, VERY UNHAPPY