Disputing Invalid Bank Charges on my Premium Cheque Account

Good day

I have a premium cheque account with ABSA bank and wish to escalate a query with regards admin charges levied on my account.

My official salary pay date is the 26th of the month, and as our company does manual payments and not magtape, I set my debit orders for the 27th onwards. Some months my pay date is a day earlier, and some of the suppliers use the Naedo tracking system and have now set there debit orders to run on the 25th, even though I have not authorised this. I have tried changing the debit order date with the suppliers, so that they only debit after the 26th of the month, but they say that the monitor the account via the Naedo tracking system, and debit as soon a funds are available in the account. However, in May 2017, I found out that this is not the case, when the suppliers debit orders were run on 25th of May and they all bounced. On the 1 July 2017 a charge of R100 was levied by ABSA on my cheque account for unathorised debit balance fee, My profile was also negatively affected because of the bounces.

I went into the bank several times over the last 6 months and asked at customer services why the bank allows the debit orders to run based on Naedo tracking. Each time the customer service assistant referred me back to the supplier and stated that ABSA is only a 3rd party. What I have had to do over the last several months, is ask my husband to transfer money into my account on the 25th of each month to avoid debit orders bouncing. He has been doing this as soon as his salary reflects in his account, which is often only on the evening of the 25th.

On the 24th and 25th of January, 5 debit orders were run on my account: I had provided funds for the one on the 24th R94 and on the 25th - my husband transferred R6000 to my account for the debit orders. The debit orders ran successfully and were not returned unpaid. However for each debit order that ran, the following appears on my statement: UNSUCCESSFUL EXT ( 150,00 ) SUPPLIER REF/ SUPPLIER ACCOUNT NO. with a 0.00 in in the amount field. My balance also remains unchanged, showing that my account did not go into the red. On 2 February 2018, an exceptionally high admin charge of R750 (EFFEC ********** 8) was levied by ABSA on my cheque account.

I went into the ABSA branch at Bryanston Shopping Centre today, to query this admin charge. I was assisted by Senamile Shwle. She was very helpful and did her utmost best to assist me. She tried unsuccessfully to call the charges department, in order to query the charges. Their phone went unanswered for 20 minutes. I eventually had to leave as I had to get back to work. Senamile promised to continue to try and contact the charges department and took my email address, should she be successful in contacting them. She also gave me the contact no. - 08 ********** 0 for the charges department, and I have tried calling 3 times since then. I held on for over 30 minutes and - all I got was a message stating that: "We are experiencing a high volume of calls, please be patient. The average wait time for your language selection is more than 5 minutes. Please stay online." In total, I have spent an hour and a half today on hold, plus the 20 minutes in the ABSA branch, while Senamile held on for the charges department.

This is totally unacceptable, shocking service from ABSA.

Please contact me urgently in this regard.

Thank you Regards Liesl Lodewyk