Poor service is worse than no service at all - FNB at their finest

I finally upgraded to FNB Private Clients after years of seeing no value in the offering. Finally I caved and upgraded as I figured the increase in fees would be justified if I at least got better service. I had a banker assigned to my account before the upgrade, as a result of a system error (apparently) on FNB's side, and I figure lets just give it a go. First, the cards were delivered one by one. Not sure what the logic is but let's assume it's to do with ***** risk mitigation. OK fine. Debit card arrives. Petrol card arrives a few days later. But the Credit card doesn't arrive. I get a message that the card has been activated. No biggie, I thought it was just a system message in error, and I do a temporary block on the card to be safe. A few days go by and still no card, despite scheduling it in the app about 3 times. I also was not contacted by anyone from the ***** department so I wasn't concerned that the card was missing in transit.

This is where I the one star is (not) earned. Really it should be minus one star. FNB, your secure chat is extremely frustrating. It is excruciatingly slow and you wait ages to finally see 'agent is typing'. Relief! Your query is going to be resolved, finally. Wrong! FNB, you either need to upskill your call centre or s**** it entirely. No service is better than poor service! If all you achieve is a bitter taste in the mouths' of your clients, what is the point? The agents (there are the exception) have a dismissive attitude and seem to just want to transfer a query to another division. At the last interaction I was informed by Masala from Card Deliveries (after pressing for a solution as he seemed to have none) that the ***** department was busy with the card and I was immediately transferred. Then the ***** department tells me there are no transactions on the card and I need to take the query up with the delivery team. So round and round we go. Again. NO, enough!

FNB, we all know banking is sticky but your service standards are becoming worse by the day. If you can't do a simple thing right like deliver a credit card. Supposedly to a "private client" and your "dedicated" team can't string together a coherent solution, perhaps I need to do the work and move my business elsewhere. I cannot believe clients tolerate mediocre service in 2021. Get with the times!