Is is just pernicious incompetence, or harassment/neglect of the needs of transgender and disabled people?

It is hard to decide how to describe the way FNB makes me feel these days because for my lifepartner and I banking with FNB has become a source of misery that has made me question my brand loyalty of a over a decade.

For months now our every interaction with the bank has the opportunity to turn into another misgendering, another suspicion cast on our characters, another opportunity for the bank to lord it over us with expensive to obtain and disability inacessible demands that we prove our experience, existence and identity real at each turn or otherwise they disrupt our whole lives and keep our financial stability hostage. Our ability to use our own money as we please has become subject to the whim of every potentially *****ed and ableist call centre agent who decides that being disabled and ***** makes us suspicious and *************.

For my partner Abigail it has manifested as perniciously flagging almost any changes made to their account as potential ********** activity while there has never been any complaint of ***** or evidence of any wrongdoing or irregularity other than that her name seem at odds with her gender marker on her ID, and that often I am helping her manage her finances because she has problems with executive function, speaking on the phone, and agoraphobia and struggles with doing her own banking admin by herself (something common for transgender people).

Apparently asking to have your banking be accessible ie. delivering our card to your home or doing your banking remotely/online and not wishing to speak on the phone or go into the branch is equal to some kind of evidence of being a ***** and to set a series of blocks and flagging into motion on her account, despite literally no crime of that type being reported, no security breach being noted, and despite this sort of behaviour being average for MOST people with serious anxiety and executive function disorders and not at all suspicious behaviour for someone who is trans.

No record is ever kept of our request not to misgender her, or that I am authorised to assist with her banking admin. In fact a lot of the time our complaints appear to vanish into literal thin air with promises by agents on the phone just being worth as much as hot air, as was most evident when we had to reorder her card delivered to our home three times before it was eventually delivered as was promised - almost a month later than it was meant to be.

For me personally it has manifested as the bank maintaining an endless months long loop of hoops to jump to reverse a transaction that should never have been cleared, while acting as though money dissapearing from my account is some kind of ***** on MY part and I should prove to the bank that they have to recover these funds for me rather than how it should be: The bank owing me an explanation for how these funds were deducted from my account when I was told that the transaction had failed and did not receive the goods I have paid for as result. I am the one deprived....and yet I am treated like I am petitioning to the bank for a favour.

I spent hours of my time and precious energy I do not have as a disabled person with a chronic fatigue and pain disorder as well as a developmental disorder that affects my executive function trying to report this issue and have my funds recovered....only to have the bank repeatedly scupper the process apparently arbitrarily or at least for reasons that were never explained to me. They only took an interest again after I eventually forced a response by appealing for help from the Banking ombudsman...and even now they expect me to jump more hoops and do all manner of admin when I have provided ample evidence that the transaction was not valid and needs to be reversed and the vendor is not obstructing this request. At no point is it noted that doing all this labour for the bank is inaccessible for a disabled person and causes us material and psychological distress. Somehow there seems no acknowledgement that the bank has done us a disservice in how they managed this issue, and that they aught really at this point to offer us an unconditional refund instead of inventing more hoops for me to jump to get it back as though that is still fair.

If it did not take an equal mountain of paperwork to change banks I would already have closed our accounts... and at this point once I am done moving house in a month or two and have my new lease in hand I think I just might do so anyway with the hope that perhaps one of your competitors might have more respect for it's customers. If it were up to Abigail to do the paperwork I think we would already have changed banks a month ago when the bank started calling her "MR" on every interaction and even printed it on her bank card despite us repeatedly informing the agents how to address her correctly. Do you have no CMS or notes on your system for this? How backwards (and discriminatory) is it that you cannot correctly gender your transgender customers upon request?

I am just done with FNB. Where once you were the jewel of the South African banking industry you have become just another rotten apple in the barrel of organisations that take no interest in the needs of minorities and people with disabilities.