FNB Premier's customer service is absolutely appalling!

In my view, FNB doesn't even deserve a one star rating. A few weeks back, I received a letter from FNB, providing details in relation to my FNB premier credit card. Upon seeing my interest rate, which is stated to be 15.50% I decided that I was maybe time to downgrade my accounts from Premier to Aspire to try and save up on banking fees as the monthly account fees for Aspire are a bit lower. In February 2022, I had requested a credit card interest rate review which was declined. Since one can only apply for an interest rate review after six months, the consultant that assisted me with the downgrade advised that I must apply again and see if it will be approved this time around as it is now August and the six months has elapsed. I told her that I am not hopeful that FNB will decrease my interest rate as each time I have ever app****, it has always been declined, despite the fact that I have an excellent credit score. I am not certain what other criteria FNB applies when determining ones interest rate apart from their actual credit score but mine has never worked in my favour. With that in mind, I asked her to do two things, one being to put in the request for a downgrade of both my debit and credit accounts and two, being to apply for an interest rate review on my current credit card.

a few days later, I get a quote from FNB for the Aspire accounts that I wanted to downgrade to and realised that if I were to downgrade my credit card from Premier to Aspire, my interest rate would go up from 15.50% to 16.50%. I decided not to accept the quote because the sole reason I was downgrading was to try and save up on bank charges so it would not make sense to downgrade, but on the other hand pay more interest.

A couple of days after this, I receive an email from an FNB Premier consultant called Esther Dikeledi Mampuru, advising me that their credit card division has approved a rate review to decrease my Premier credit card from 16.50% to 15.50% and if I wish to proceed with the credit card downgrade, I must note that the limit will be kept on 16.50%. I immediately responded and told her that my interest rate on my Premier credit card was not 16.50% and asked that she checks why it was changed from 15.50% to 16.50%.

A week later, I receive a response from Ms Mampuru, telling me how my interest rate increased because of the repo-rate increase on the following dates: 24 March 2022, 20 May 2022 and 21 July 2022 respectively. Mind you, all of this is happening mid-August, which is way after this said repo-rate increase. I respond to her to tell her that if she were to look at my account, she would see that FNB had changed my interest rate only after I had app**** for the downgrade to Aspire and that they had for some strange reason app**** the Aspire interest rate on my current premier interest rate. I sent this email to her on Friday 26 August 2022. Today is Saturday, 3 September 2022 and she has not bothered to respond to me.

FNB's customer service has left such a bitter taste in my mouth. I have been banking with them for almost 15 years if not more but that means absolutely nothing to them.