What an awful experience trying to sign up

What a painful experience it has been. I've been trying to apply for a Virgin Money Card for over 3 months and I have just been wasting my time. I had to restart the application three times already due to administration errors or them just simply taking too long to process the application. I call them on a daily basis, but usually I have to spent an eternity on hold since they only have three people working in their call center.

The first time I app**** for the card, they took extremely long to process everything and didn't back to me at all (This is after I accepted the quote and everything). Eventually I phoned to hear what went wrong and they told me that the copy of my ID that I sent had to be certified (Would be fantastic if they notified me somehow). I got the copy of my ID certified and sent it in. No response. Phoned in again and they said the application had lapsed and I need to restart the whole process.

So I filled in a second online application. On the one page it gave me an error that the contact number I entered isn't in the correct format (+27 format vs 0.. format), but there was no numbers on the current page. So I tried to go back to the previous page (The system probably only picked up the issue on the next page), instead the application continued. I phoned them on a daily basis and eventually got the quote and everything. Again no response. When I phoned again they said my employment information was missing from the application (Due to that error it wiped out all my employment information). They told me they have never seen anything like it, since it shouldn't even have given me quote in this case and that they have to escalate the application to their back-office for inspection. Some time goes by and I phone in again. Turns out there is no way they can add that information after the application has been submitted, even though it was their system that threw the information out. So I have to restart the whole application again...

So attempt number 3. Filled in the whole online application again. Submitted everything I need to and phoned in on a daily basis. Waiting for about 20 mins on hold every single time. Still no success.

I don't understand how any business can manage like that? How do they even get new customers if the process is so extremely frustrating and difficult to sign up? I've spent hundreds of Rands on airtime trying to sort out their problems. Here's a tip: If you lose your client's data, its your responsibility to fix the problem.

I don't know what good will come from this review. I don't think this will help in any way to solve my problem, but hopefully this will scare off other people in advance before they also go through the same experience. If someone from Virgin Money sees this, please try and have some kind of communication with the person trying to apply. A basic auto generated email would do wonders. Having to phone in on a daily basis over several months is a terrible experience for everyone involved. I understand that things go wrong, but if you force a client to spend hundreds of hours on trying to get a simple application submitted then you are doing something wrong. Please look redesigning your entire system.