Do not get FNB student loan. Save yourself the headache.

My mother took out a student loan for me to study in 2014. We had no issues until I graduated in 2018. Ever since then we have had issues trying to pay the capital and changing the debit order authorization so that I can pay off the loan as I work now.

We have talked to multiple consultants over the years and sent many emails and debit order authorization forms to FNB and still no resolution. We can only initiate communicate with them via the telephone and its a different consultants everytime who gives different information. They have no idea what they are doing at that call centre. We live in a small town so going to a branch is useless, they tell you they don't have a student loans department there so you have to call the national student loan department on the phone in the branch and can sit on the phone for an hour + trying to get through.

We thought it was finally sorted out in Aug 2021 where we managed to send in all the documents required AGAIN and were told it would run on the 1st September from my account and if my account was ever in arrears it would revert back to the account my mother had used over the years. The debit order didn't run until November when we had to call them to say it hadn't run on either of our accounts for months. Even then they didn't do it on the agreed date. Fine, I make payments for the months missed and were told they would make sure it runs correctly from there onwards. Come Jan 2022 and they still had not taken the debit order from my account and didn't even revert it back to the old account. We have to be the ones to report it hasn't been debited by FNB evry single time. We were eventually contacted by lawyers saying we are in arrears and my mothers credit score is now affected. Trying to sort out this dispute is an absolute nightmare because communication is horrific and every new consultant at that damn call center says something different and no one has any idea what they are doing there. You sit on the phone for hours to get very little information about going forward and how to ensure it gets debited correctly.

Honestly, it is unacceptable that it has taken us 3 going to 4 years to just change a debit order authorization to repay the loan and it still isn't sorted out. And it all boils down to poor forms of communication and follow up.