Unacceptable service when the system shut down during an ATM transaction

1. Content of an email sent to ABSA:

On Saturday 6th January 2018 at around 13:35 I tried to draw R2000.00 at the ATM at William Nicol Pick n Pay (Johannesburg). During the transaction The ATM shut down – the message was ‘Signal Lost’ and then ‘Windows Shutting Down’. The machine ejected my card but no money was paid out. My husband and I waited about 5 minutes but there was no sign of the machine restarting. We then proceeded to buy our groceries after which we went back to the ATM, which was now online again, and I drew a mini-statement which showed my account had been debited and as the amount was my daily limit I could not draw any cash. I tried to phone the call centre but the call took too long so I decided to phone from our land line at home. I phone from there at around 14:25 and spoke to Desmond who explained that I needed to go into a branch on Monday to lodge my complaint. I went to ABSA ****arney on Monday and lodged the problem and was advised that it would take 2 weeks to investigate and credit my account. I enquired as to whether I would receive interest on the money but was told as I have a savings account that would not happen. That is not acceptable to me as the bank gets interest on my money in the meantime. This 2 week period is totally unacceptable to me: With the your electronic systems · it should be possible to check the ATM history within a day as the excess cash should have traced when the cash in the machine and the · transactions did not balance · the error (machine downtime) should be easily traced My questions: · Why can the complaint not be done telephonically at the time of the incident? · Why does it take so long to check the ATM info and refund the money? · Why does ABSA not pay interest that they have now earned on the client’s money to the client? · Why is the client left to feel that they are at fault when ABSA systems are at fault?

2. Reply from ABSA ......

Their standard email saying the complaint had been forwarded to consultant (in both English and Afrikaans) - followed by an email (2018-01-11 )from a complaints consultant 'Kindly see response below regarding complaint.' with a copy of a message (not sure of the origin) - > Journal sent for processing/approval. Client may be refunded today or tomorrow.

The money was credited to my account 2018-01-15 - SMS message received @ 14:19.

3. My complaints:

- There was to response to my questions - With today's electronic systems the process should not take so long - The complaint should have been handled when I phoned on Saturday and I should not have to take time off work to travel to the bank branch to lodge the problem - There was nothing personal in any of the response emails I received ... I am just another number!

I have been an ABSA client for almost 40 years and would have thought that the customer service would have been more considerate!