A disaster from start to finish. Except it's not finished yet... You'll see what we mean...

Settle back, grab a coffee and relax. I would like to share our story of opening a business bank account for the Cape Town Gospel Choir. You may find this cautionary tale helpful as you consider opening a bank account for your charity, NPO or organisation.

Some months ago, our board decided to open a bank account as we'd recently launched the choir as an NPO. Our trustees and signatories live in separate areas and so we decided that the best thing would be to go through FNB's online application process. They advertise that you can open an account online.

So we went about getting mandates signed, application forms completed, and submitted it all. We supp**** our NPO number, and all the relevant information, and explained that though we had supp**** the confirmation letter from the Department of Social Development, we hadn't received our certificate yet as it was in the process of being sent from Pretoria to the provincial authority - though they could even find us listed on the DSD website as a registered NPO.

All went well until we hit the first roadblock. They insisted on the actual certificate. We went back and forth on this for a few weeks, supplying the paperwork from the DSD, but to no avail. So we said, ok, let's just open the account as a voluntary association. Our replies to emails disappeared into a black hole. More often than not, if you rep**** with a question, you were simply resent the original email, with no explanation. They couldn't be bothered answering. "DO AS YOU ARE TOLD!" was the prevailing attitude we read in the emails. Eventually, after weeks and weeks of this, we gave up. We sent an email saying - please close this account and application.

But no! FNB won't have that! We were repeatedly pestered for documentation we explained we didn't yet have. First they wouldn't open the account, now they wouldn't close it. Phone calls were pointless. We were passed in hour-long calls from department to department - five, six, seven, eight different people all saying, "oh it's not me you want, it's someone else..." inevitably ending up with you back at the department in which you started. Slopey shoulders everywhere, no-one willing to actually work. Just pass on to someone else as quickly as you can.

Sometimes they'd promise to call you back "within 48 hours". Did this ever happen? HAH! Never! Of course it never happened.

Then, one day, we managed to get our hands on our shiney new NPO certificate. "Now" we thought, "now, they will listen to us! Now all the obstacles will tumble out of our way and our new bank account will be up and running in only a few days."

O foolish board. Of course that didn't happen.

Just deposit some money into the account and all will be well, they said. So we did. And was it well?

Of course not! Now there was another reason that the account could not be activated. There was a nother form that needed completed - one they hadn't told us about before. We completed them and sent them back.

More phonecalls. More missed call-backs, more long phonecalls in which you never spoke to one department for more than 5 minutes before being told you needed to speak to someone else.

Finally, last friday, we spoke to someone in Business banking who promised that someone would call Monday morning, from online enterprise.

And they did! Finally, we're getting somewhere! We still had no access to online banking, though we were assured the bank account had been opened.

They called!

To tell us we had to go to the branch because "while I can see on the system that you signed a mandate, it's not on my system at online banking, so I can't do anything unless you come to the branch and sign another one."

So, that was it. You can open an account at a physical branch online, but you can't open an online account without going into a physical branch. Is that what you're telling me?

We explained again that visiting the branch wasn't possible, which is why we went down the online road. Can't you get the documentation from the other department?

She'll check. And call me back.

She did actually call me back. To give me the number for the buisiness banking department. So we could ask them to load the mandate onto the online banking system. This is the department we'd started in six months ago.

"Isn't this your internal problem?" I asked, "Shouldn't you be handling this and coming back to the customer with a solution?"

I asked for the name of the most senior person in FNB to whom I could lodge a complaint. We'd started opening this account in mid January. It's mid June now. And we still don't have access, despite providing every piece of documentation they requested.

"I'll call you back" she said.

And the line went dead.

(This is a repeat post, as the original had an error. Thanks HP for fixing).