My money is not good enough for FNB

Complaint: Uselessness of your Secure Chat consultant (Stanley) / Absolute ineffective communications system via Electronic Platforms

Firstly I have been with FNB going on 5 or 6 years I think. I have recently downgraded my account from Premium to Gold, because my salary was cut in half by job losses and me being placed under medical disability in September 2020. The decision to downgrade was purely because to save money, my wife lost her job and mine was the only income we now have. But since I have downgraded my account status (and I pay FNB less in banking fees), I have been treated like a customer that has no value to you or your bank.

Secondly, I have COPD which is the name for a group of lung conditions that cause breathing difficulties (one of the groups is emphysema), I have severe damage to my lungs and suffer greatly with inflammation of my lungs and fluid build up. In addition I have also been diagnosed with RVH, and this means that the right side of my heart chamber is enlarged and fights to pump oxygenated blood to my lungs. So when this pandemic hits South Africa, I am under strict instruction from my doctors that I should NEVER if EVER go out and expose myself to people and places. Because this virus will have deadly consequences for me. So therefore I make use of FNB's electronic platforms such as Secure Chat via my browser or phone, call centres and emails. Previously when I had my Premium account there was not an instance where I can remember that I ever had to go into the bank to sort out any problems. But since September and the downgrade, I have had nothing but problems and NOW I am forced to go to the bank because your consultants in the call centres and on the Secure Chap portal find it just too convenient to drop the phone in your ear. Yes, this happened yesterday TWICE. Stanley whom I spoke to yesterday via Secure Chat is so unhelpful and NOT up to scratch on how to deal with a difficult client. And it is not like he is actually talking to me in person, it is texting/writing, and I could see that all he knows is A, B, C like a toddler. He can not think outside the box and has absolutely no interest in assisting the client/customer. I also want to ad, that your electronic voice recognition response bot, is useless, people want to talk to a human not a stupid robot that has not been programmed in how to deal with real life issues. So please do yourself a favour and get rid of it.

Here are my call log to FNB from the 15th February 2021: 15/02/2021 @ 08:06am 18/02/2021 @ 09:01am 25/02/2021 @ 15:59pm 26/02/2021 @ 08:59am (x2 had to call back because the consultant dropped the phone in my hear) 26/02/2021 @ 09:17am 26/02/2021 @ 09:30am 26/02/2021 @ 09:30am And every time I get told by FNB Secure Chat consultants to CALL the Gold Card Department/General Enquiries. But clearly this is not helping or solving any issues.

I have placed a STOP order on ALL FASTA (Organisation) as from January 2021 and requested that they be reversed. I have paid the R40 x 6 each in banking charges for stopping these banking orders.

My money is supposed to be SAFE with FNB, but apparently it is not. The amounts do not change, so maybe the reference number (as per one of your consultants information). I am told to go to the organisation and claim MY money back from them. But seriously if one has any kind of brain activity, one will know that every company is desperate out there and we as consumers are being crucified as far as we go.

I feel and believe that MY money is NOT safe with FNB and I believe that FNB does not care for the little/middle man. I suppose our little amounts of money mean nothing to a large bank like FNB. But if EVERY SINGLE person with a little amount of money has to pull out, what are your profit/bottom line margins gonna look like at the end of the day. Do you want to know why people are closing their bank accounts with FNB, it is because we feel that FNB gives all kinds of organization/people/********** access to OUR money and does not give a darn how that affects that persons/clients household.

With FNB refusing to reverse and STOP FASTA from continuing debiting money from my account, let me tell what the effect is in my household. #I pay my own medical aid, so that means that for the month of January and - #February I can not pay my medical aid. #I can not purchase my chorionic medications that help assist my heart and lung conditions, not to mention my blood pressure medications, my diabetes medications, my severe depression medication, my lung medication that assist with breaking down the fluids on my lungs. But guess what, now I can not go to the hospital (usually the ICU), because I did NOT pay my medical aid, furthermore, the contracted oxygen machine provider through my medical aid, will come and fetch the oxygen machine, which assist in helping me with oxygen because I must get 5 litres of oxygen per minutes for 20 hours a day because I only have 47% lung capacity.

So with the above mention (and the refusal of FNB to reverse these debit orders (from January and February, and actually stopping them from continuing to debit my account), I will probably die within a week.

Yes, without my medication and oxygen machine, I will literally die within a week, and maybe sooner if I go to a Government Hospital.

I have requested that my wife speak on my behalf and actually asked FNB to load her on my account as a member to sort out all banking issues on my behalf, because I am on oxygen 20 hours a day. And guess what, this has also NOT been done. I lose more oxygen when I speak that you would actually believe.

So my email to you is this, is FNB's policies and procedures and lack of service delivery MORE important than MY life?