FNB: FAILED NATIONAL BANK

I own a service station in Cape Town which banks with FNB. I purchased the business 3 years ago with the banking relationship in place. I also personally bank with FNB and have done so since opening my first banking / BOB account when I was 8 years old.

Things in the business and it's banking were fine for first couple of years. The business was a severely covid affected business and it needed to be turned around, which we did. We restructured, rebranded and invested heavily into the site which has seen turnover and performance double over the time I've owned it.

The business has also recruited new people, providing employment to people and income to families, something I am very happy with. With the growth has also come growth in banking fees and commissions which have become significant costs to the business, something I've also been accepting of during our growth.

Approximately 14 months ago I started noticing anomalies in our banking which caused irregularities in our cash flow. A service station is a high volume, low margin game and cash flow planning is critical.

The anomalies persisted and our sales which arrive in our account started becoming haphazard, irregular and difficult to reconcile with the sales reports which came from the business.

To cut a very long and painful story short, I have an email thread of over 150 emails complaining of this problem which has escalated and caused enormous issues in our business. The banking problem has become untenable, has made the cash flow planning nearly impossible to manage, has taken hours of phone calls being bounced from one place to another in FNBs web of unhelpful staff, where I have spent hours on calls with Heads of various departments, which has all amounted to nothing.

Nothing, except undeserving penalty fees which has been put against our business costing it thousands of Rands, while the FNB continues to reap the rewards of our people and their work in this business.

With an amazing result of our nation's rugby team battling the world's best to emerge victorious is a truly amazing thing, something this country needs, something which shows what we're capable as a nation. FNBs branding has been all over the Rugby World Cup scene which must have cost them a fortune. A fortune partly invested by my struggling business which is fighting battles of load shedding, *******ion and crime. After seeing today's banking and irreugalrities once agaon, I am at my wits end and I have to protect my business from FNB! I should not have to use my capacity and hard earned income trying to fight for my business's survival from FNB !