MvdM
Megan van der Merwe

1 reviews | Active since Aug 2010

22 Jan 2019, 15:27

Premier to Private Client - I DO NOT WANT TO BE A PRIVATE CLIENT!

I am an FNB premier client. Whenever I login to the FNB app it often asks me if I would like to upgrade to Private clients. A few years ago I upgraded to Private clients and soon realised that I wasn't getting value for the extra fees I was paying so I downgraded back to Premier. I am happy on Premier. This morning, in a rush, I was standing at an ATM trying to make a cardless cash withdrawal and because I was in a hurry when I opened the app and just clicked next, next because there are always some important notices about spam or something that you have to accept. I look again and see something about private clients so i ignore it and continue requesting my withdrawal on the app. When I got back in the car I went to have a look at what I had accepted and see a whole lot of messages from FNB telling me that my new private clients cheque account was opened successfully and that my card has been ordered! I do not want to be a Private Client. I phoned FNB Premier this morning and they were quite pleasant but kept saying that I needed to contact the Private clients division if I want to downgrade!! I didn't want to upgrade in the first place! I couldn't get through to Private Clients and after holding for about 20 minutes I eventually spoke to someone from Premier AGAIN (and NOT Private Clients division even though I had been dialing the Private Clients number each time I called). I asked this lady why I kept going through to Premier and she told me it might be because of some technical issue that FNB is having. She again told me that I needed to contact Private Clients in order to downgrade but suggested that I call back in an hour (?!) due to this "technical issue" I asked her if someone could please call me back when the issue was sorted and she said she would give my details to the Private Client division. After all I am now an apparent Private Client you would expect that that someone would phone me back? No one called. At 14h30 I called the Private Clients number and again landed up in the premier division. The lady I spoke to then transferred me to Private Clients division. I spoke to Fiona / Mpho Lekgoe and she again told me that I need to apply for a downgrade. I am so unbelievably frustrated at this point that one erroneous click of a button on the app has caused me such a huge problem! Mpho advised that it would take about 6 days for my request to be fulfilled as I had to wait for delivery of my private clients card first. I now see on my account that I have been charged Premier services fees of R196 which are apparently pro-rata which means that I will now also be charged an extra R250 odd Rand, on top of what I was paying, to be a private client. The last time I upgraded and then downgraded I lost 2 months of ebucks. I am on ebucks level 5 and work very hard at staying on the top level. This is the whole reason that I was drawing money from the cardless cash withdrawal in the first place! Because of ebucks! Now I am going to lose another month (maybe 2) because my account has moved from premier to private and hopefully back to premier at some point. This message always comes up on my app and I always say: No I do not want to be a private client, but one small push of a button and now I am locked in with no cancellation clause (?) besides having to wait for my new cards to be delivered and then downgrade! I am so unbelievably frustrated! Thinking about it now if I had just drawn money using my actual card, which FNB doesn't want us to do, I wouldn't be in this situation!

0
Replies (3)
FNB (First National Bank)
FNB (First National Bank)'s reply22 Jan 2019, 16:49
Official
 
Good day Megan, 

Thank you for taking the time to bring this to our attention. We would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused. 

A formal complaint has been logged on your behalf and referred to the relevant department who will investigate and provide you with feedback. 

The reference number is ***. 

Regards, 
 
Hello Peter Complaints Team 

*** (option one) 

MvdM
Megan van der Merwe's update25 Jan 2019, 14:28
Reviewer Update
Good day I still haven't received any feedback.
MvdM
Megan van der Merwe's update31 Jan 2019, 16:19
Reviewer Update
And still nothing...