Worst service

I am writing this on Christmas eve very annoyed as Absa is trying to ***** my December, I made a transaction on the 1st of December using a VodaPay app to purchase electricity, the transaction was unsuccessful due to eskom technical issues, however the transaction was debited from my account and kept as "uncleared/pending " I have tried all Absa departments to try resolve this but 23 days later I am still not assisted. VodaPay confirmed that the transaction was unsuccessful on their side and the App did not debit hence money is still showing as pending on my account, I have been sent to Authorization department which is practically useless as no one responds to emails you just get an automated response with reference number and that's it. I informed Absa that they should release the money back to my Acc but yesterday I was told VodaPay must send Authorization letter to Absa to confirm that... what kind of a mickey mouse game is this? How can a merchant authorize a transaction that they didn't confirm? If it's ***** why would the merchant still not process the transaction until now? This is annoying because now my credit card same thing happened at Woolworths where 1 transaction debited twice and when I called Absa I was told Woolworths must send Authorization to cancel 1 transaction, the transaction is duplicate and occurred same time how can Absa not just cancel 1 transaction? Now I have to drive up and down trying to get this resolved wasting time and money that people jug hog like they worked for it. I have never experienced such bad service anywhere, as a client and looking at the history it should be easy to pick out ********** transaction or reversals or at least request me to supply some sort of proof in order to resolve instead of just outright sending me from Pilar to post. I'm sitting with 2 accounts with an amount of +/- R900 in uncleared account worst part 1 is from the 1st of December, shouldn't it be easy to reverse and if the merchant want to process again they will charge my card as they still have the detail? I don't want any automated responses I want someone to contact me on *** and provide feedback on when will these be resolved, the branch at Edenvale was also useless as I spent over an hour just to be told they can't do anything only Authorization can solve this via emails, I have reference numbers but no one can assist. Cheque acc ref C-***7 Credit card ref C-***8 Check these 2 ref and my details and contact me

Annoyed customer