Ampath's ineffectiveness becomes client's problem

I made payment to Ampath on 24 July 2024. On 05 August 2024 I received a SMS stating that payment was overdue. I immediately called Ampath and spoke to an employee who asked me to email proof of payment to her specific email address; I did so immediately and I also included the guarantor’s name and medical aid details for Ampath’s information, on the assumption that every additional piece of information would assist them to track payment more easily. I was assured by the person I spoke to that they would revert, but they never did. I assumed that Ampath’s processes and employees functioned with at least minimal efficiency and that having received proof of payment, Ampath would consider the matter resolved, but apparently not.

Today, Ampath sent another SMS stating that the account would be handed over if payment was not received. Obviously being handed over would have a negative impact on our credit rating and would incur additional costs for us, and would require a fair amount of time to resolve.

I immediately contacted Ampath and after some difficulty managed to get hold of the same person I had spoken to on 05 August. When I told her I had submitted all information to her email address more than three weeks previously, as she had told me to do, she searched her emails and saw my email with proof of payment, apparently for the first time since I sent it three weeks earlier - clearly Ampath staff just don’t check their emails, even when they have instructed you to email them. She then said I was receiving threats of being handed over because Ampath’s finance department had not yet located my payment in their account. This is both bizarre and unacceptable - Ampath’s representative was telling me that despite having all relevant information available to them for more than three weeks, they have not yet actually bothered to locate the payment, instead making it a problem that I have to solve for them if I want to avoid being handed over.