Poor service & lost trust

<p>Dear ABSA,</p> <p>On Saturday evening I made an Immediate Interbank Payment (IIB) to an account at FNB. I was making a purchase that was urgent and needed to be in by Sunday for me to collect my purchase.</p> <p>I used my internet banking service to make the payment and triple-checked that it was set to be immediate with the tickbox, acknowledging that I would pay around R65 for the transaction fee. I then processed and approved the payment.</p> <p>On receiving the notification, my heart sank to my stomach as I read that the Immediate Interbank Payment option was marked with an: N. I assume that that means it didn't go through immediately, and would only clear by midnight on Monday.</p> <p>I immediately phoned your help line and got hold of Sipho Nhlonipho at 22:16, 24 Sept 2016. He was polite and well mannered, but informed me that there was nothing that he could do, that there was an IIB payment error and the immediate part of the transaction had been rejected, but the payment had still gone through - no error message was given to me on the internet banking webpage. He also informed me that he was unable to help and could not give any advice on what to do, but suggested that I go into my branch to reverse the transaction.</p> <p>So I was destined to lose my purchase, (a classic motorbike I've been looking for for 6 months and payment had to be in by Sunday to secure it), and end up short on R11k and have to try and get the money back from someone I have met once for 5 minutes with no support from my bank.</p> <p>Sunday, the money did not go through. </p> <p>Monday, the money did not go through.</p> <p>Tuesday, the money did not go through.</p> <p>Wednesday morning, finally, the money went through to the man I had paid, and he assured me that he would return it immediately (he’s a nice guy), but I have yet to get a notification of a transaction.</p> <p>This morning, Wednesday the 28th, I took the morning off work to go and report out the problem at my branch (Northgate), more to make the problem known to you so you could fix the bug and make sure I can trust in making IIBs in the future without worrying that it might take a week.</p> <p>When I walked in, no one was at the front desk to direct me, so I went over to one of the consultants, none of whom were busy with clients. She was rude to me and uninspired to do her job, (unfortunately she had no nametag) and told me to go and wait in the queue to speak to customer services. I duly went over and waited 10 minutes in the queue, while one of the customer services assisted the security guard at the door with making copies of his ID...</p> <p>Eventually I got my turn to speak to polite young lady who heard my case and interrupted me occasionally to tell me that sometimes IIBs take an hour to go through, but was however, just as unable to help me as the call-centre man, and referred me to the call centre. She wasn't able to tell me how long after a transaction was made, I could still reverse a transaction. She couldn't help me by processing the reversal. She couldn't put me onto someone who could help or even give me a number for someone to call. As an acknowledgement of the system error on your side, she admitted that the Internet might have been broken on the weekend (I assured her that the Internet was fine). Biting my tongue until it bled, I despondently walked out and went to work, defeated. </p> <p>I know that you are a big organisation and caring about your staff and your customers must be a nightmare, but you are really not doing well on pretending to. But that's ok, I have a lot of patience and take a lot of abuse, I am a lecturer. But I have lost my trust in your system now, and it doesn’t have a personality or emotions and works practically all the time, so to the developers, whom I respect as people who at least have some idea as to what is going on, please be aware of the bug and look into it. I'll come and bring you coffee if I need to, just let me know. </p> <p>Oh, and someone, please help me get my money back. Soon.</p> <p> </p>