FNB: nice people ... IF you can make it through the mangler to talk to them

Dear FNB

I have just this minute responded to a "How was your experience" email with a 9 for call center agent Hlakaniphile Faith Nkosi. What I'd like to ask is when you're going to send a similar email asking what my experience was like dealing with the bank systems because I need to give you a 1 for that?

As always, it's a complete time-mangling nightmare trying to speak to an actual, sensible person when you need to and even when you do finally get to speak to the right person there is NOTHING they can do about your problem but placate you or, at best, clarify the banks confusing messages about how it's contradicting itself and complicating things.

I recently made an Ebay.co.uk purchase and FNB flagged the transaction as suspicious - all quite understandable. I'm asked by messaging to say Yes it's me or No and I'm told to try again after a few minutes, which I do. Nice. But now I have 2 transactions marked as suspicious and I'm being asked repeatedly to confirm if it's me and I have the dilemma of not knowing if saying Yes again is saying Yes to a second transaction for the same thing so I ignore, communicate with the seller and resolve to phone the bank in the morning. I'm reassured to see the one attempt marked as pending but later it disappears from the list of transactions in my banking app.

What a nightmare it was trying to phone and speak to an actual appropriate person to clear it up! - having some stupid machine insist I give it a wrong answer to it's questions as to what I want to do - Repeatedly shunted from one department to another, going in circles. - Getting cut off - repeatedly having to enter my ID number and authenticate as if I'm talking to a different bank every time I'm shunted onto a different track in the yard - finally getting to speak to a sensible human and being told to enter my ID and authenticate yet again, except this time the system fails to send the okay notice to my app.

The agent turns out to be really nice and patient and handles my growing anger very well but is essentially no help because she can't actually DO anything. She can't clear the payment. Fortunately the seller was prepared to wait another day and my new scanner is now being shipped.

Another communication issue: I transferred the necessary funds to my credit card from my current account just before the purchase. I checked to see if it was available and it was there, in my "available" balance so I went ahead. Now I'm told by the call center that FNB had to wait for the funds to clear between my current account and my credit card account. What is the point of marking it available if it must still clear?!! And why must I wait 1-2 days for the transfer of money that's been in my current account for a week to "clear" in the credit card account right beside it?!

This has been my and my wife's experience of FNB over the past 5 years or so: nice people but an awful, intransigent, inflexible, downright inhuman works the moment you have a problem. It's trip to the abattoir.