Extremely Poor Service from ABSA Vehicle Finance Devision

I am a 40-year-old man whose had an ABSA account from the time I started being able to obtain a bank account, around 18 years old. So, I used your services for over 20 years. I financed my first car through ABSA and am currently financing my house and new car that I bought recently through ABSA. All my finance products are also with ABSA. But I never had a reason to leave or felt like leaving recently due to my interactions with the Vehicle Finance unit.

I app**** for vehicle finance to purchase my new car on 22 August 2024. My case was assigned to ###, he sent an e-mail requesting me to submit supporting documents and the e-mail he sent indicated that I should get feedback within 3 days. After submitting the document, I received an e-mail from one of the credit check services (I think Clear Score) informing me that a check was done against my profile. I knew it was ABSA Vehicle Finance) but I went to check since I had never seen my profile on the service. When I looked, I realized that the profile had my old names ###. I changed both my names and surname to ### with the Department of Home Affairs, and I had ABSA update my profile accordingly.

Noticing that, I emailed to ### informing him of what I had noticed, explained the situation, and the documents that supported my explanation on 23rd. He however did not acknowledge my e-mail I did not hear anything from him. I then contacted the bank on the 26th after not getting feedback from #### for 3 days, the time within which I was expecting the application process to be complete. This is after I sent #### e-mail to inquire and he didn't respond. I was then told that the application was rejected due a ***** issue, which meant the issue with my name change. I eventually managed to get hold of #### and he confirmed that it was the name change, that he was dealing with it and promised to give me feedback later in the day. He never gave the feedback and didn't respond to my e-mails that I sent requesting feedback.

I got frustrated and asked the car dealership to apply on my behalf on the 28th and they got the application approved the following day despite the names issue. #### also got the application approved the same day but 7 days later and gave me a worse deal than that through the dealership.

I noticed on my contract when I received it from the ABSA that my debit order date was set to 25th, which presented a challenged for me as I get paid on the 26th. I contacted to change it via e-mail as they had instructed me on 23 October and I received a response with the following message:

It is too short notice to make any changes as Debit orders are billed 5/7 working days in advance. Changes cannot be made within the billing period. Debit order is due on the 25th. Please resend the request after the 25th.

I accept that the debit order cannot be changed within a short period. But I was not asking for the debit order date to be for the month but going forward. I found that the response message cold, inconsiderate, and did not respond to my request. I am being asked to send a request next month. Much as I can appreciate that its probably an automated message, which would mean that ### did not read my e-mail. I expect my bank would make some arrangement for me to pay on the 26th without me incurring penalties due to my situation, or offered another option instead of of a statement like: Debit order is due on the 25th.

Logical as ###’s message may be. I expected a to be offered other options being a valued customer.