"Shared values" banking my ass.

Thank you for your cookie cutter, copy and paste response. I am not the only person complaining about this and we can easily compare your responses.

I am well aware of your Finanial Analyser tool. It is flawed. As is your spend goal program. But you are too arrogant to listen to your customers that maybe know their own finances better than you do.

Your program’s reward structure is wrong and I just hope you can fix it before your most loyal customers find themselves in inescapable debt traps that you designed and ignored when your more active and astute customers warned you about it.

This program does not encourage saving or responsible spending no matter how many times you state it in your responses. Saying it over and over does not make it true. I cannot afford to spend R20,000 per month, consistently at a rate of R5,000 per week without crippling myself financially.

When I signed up for your program I could achieve my goal spending R1000-R1500 per week. This increase in the goal is ridiculous. On top of that, I also now have to pay for my iPhone benefit out of pocket because you changed the rules. While that is within the terms and conditions, a 300%-400% increase is not really reasonable.

Bull****. The spend goal has not been simplified, it has been made more complicated. And while it does align more with health and drive goals (which I achieve easily), there are diffirences:

1. Both Drive and Health goals cap the max goals at reasonable levels. The Spend goal does not.
2. Week to week excercise and driving habits remain consistent for the most part. Spending is a month-to-month thing, not a weekly thing. Just because I pay all my bills and buy groceries in week one and spend R4500, doesn't mean I'm going to want or need to spend R5000 in week 2 of a month.
3. Yes my goal will increase or decrease, but the mechanism is not balanced. If I overspend by R100 in one week my goal goes up R500 the next. But I fail to make the goal, I have to fail two weeks for it to go down R250? Meanwhile I'm on the hook to pay for my iPhone out of pocket as a punishment because you moved the target away from what was achievable when I signed up.
4. Your new program does not take big ticket expenses that I saved up for into account at all. Just because I saved up for a holiday for months and suddenly have a couple of big expenses, doesn't mean I can maintain that level of spending indefinitely every week of every month.

Your claim that it is the most cost effective way to own an iPhone is now an outright lie. The high interest rate and target spend of of R20,000 per month on the credit card makes it much more expensive then you advertise.

These are just some of our grievences, but they seem to be falling on deaf ears and you just keep responding with the same statements over and over. We are the canaries in the coal mine and unless you fix this, be warned, a ton of bad press and ombudsman complaints are about to flood your offices. I hope you are prepared because the bad press and loss of trust with your customers is going to take a long time to recover from.

Add it to the stack of other complaints. I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands by now.

Looking forward to either an announcement that Discovery Bank has come to your senses, or the media raking you over the coals for this dangerous and irresponsible “reward program”.