*SYSTEM FAILURE* - INTERNET BANKING

I logged a complaint with Woolworths Financial Services and even though I'm using their Credit Card, I know that Absa is the provider of the banking platform or processes that's followed, therefore the complaint is about Absa as Woolworths are not bankers but retailers.

Now that is out of the way let me get to the issue.

I have made a payment to a beneficiary on my credit card account on 1 February 2024. This transaction went through with no problems.

Then on the 13th of February I made another payment to the beneficiary, however they did not receive the money.

My first response is that this is impossible because there is no human intervention when processing a banking transaction on the internet hence humans makes mistakes.

Everything is done automatically by a system that's not supposed to make these kinds of errors and let's be honest which bank will make such an error because the have invested billions of rands into systems and have some of the best software experts to ensure everything is running smoothly.

My second thought was that the beneficiary is lying because we live in a country where crime, ***** and *******ion is rampant and our society in general don't value or display ethics, honesty or integrity and also there's no real consequences for people that commits these types of crimes, look at our previous President Zuma.

However let me not divert your attention. This is what happened:

1. The money is off my credit card. 2. I have a POP that's been generated by Absa with a transaction number it just has the Woolworths branding on it. 3. The Woolworths banking platform which I know Absa are the owner of indicates to me that the transaction was successful. 4. I requested a financial statement from the beneficiary to check if the money wasn't received to ensure I'm not being **** to. Luckily I know the beneficiary personally, however I can guarantee you if I didn't have a relationship with them they would NOT have provided me with a statement of their account. I wouldn't blame them because it's none of my business what transactions goes through someones account.

The feedback I'm getting from the 2 contact centre agents at Woolworths which are retailers and not really bankers is as follows.

1. The transaction shows declined on their internal systems and the reason for this is because my account is currently overdrawn. This might be true, however when the payment was made to the beneficiary on the 13th of February there were funds available to process this transaction. It's not the customers problem if Absa only processes their transactions on the 14th of February and only find out on the 15th that there's no more funds available. Further to this I wasn't informed that the transaction didn't go through or was declined. In my mind I had proof that the money went off the account by means of the POP generated by Absa.

2. We can see that the money went off your account and we need to log a call with Absa for them to investigate this further (which I doubt has happened) not because of incompetence but because this isn't really a Woolworths problem but Absa's system that has failed.

Also it's irrelevant of the amount because I had already paid the beneficiary for the services rendered out of my FNB account.

My problem is your system made an error, I would like the money to be reversed back to my credit card and I don't want to wait a year for this to be resolved due to Absa's red tape and internal politics.

Looking forward to a speedily reply from a competent, well versed human that can speak, write and comprehend the English or Afrikaans language. It also needs to be someone that has the authority to make decisions, not a junior staff member that needs to go please and explain my story to a manager and get various approvals before being able to tell me how this will be addressed.

TIP: PLEASE PREPARE BEFORE CALLING ME AND READ THE COMPLAINT THAT HAS TAKEN EFFORT AND TIME TO PUT TOGETHER. I DON'T LIKE TO EXPLAIN MY SELF OVER AND OVER AGAIN. ITS UNPRODUCTIVE AND INEFFICIENT. I DON'T MIND YOU DOING YOUR TELEPHONIC COMPLIANCE CHECKS TO AUTHENTICATE ME.

Furthermore it either needs to be a M or P level employee that has authority and access to an E level decision maker so that this can at least get resolved in our first interaction.

You can probably tell by now that I'm an old ex Absa employee...

Regards, Emil