Transaction control failure at FNB.

On the 28th of Sept i made a payment to GoRentals of about R35,996.80. The money was taken from my account and my balance was reduced indicating that the money has been taken. This money was for laptop rentals and a large portion of it was to be refunded after successful return of the laptops. Then around the 5th i received money into my account with no reference, no indication where it came from nothing!

I call my wife and ask her if she is expecting any payment she says no. So we give it a day to see what will happen. Come the 6th we still have no clarity. So i transfer the money into our investment pocket with the reference(It’s not clear) thinking maybe it’s the refund from go rentals. We go on to use some of the money thinking it’s our refund only to see the account go into negative.

Again not being clear we give it a few days thinking it will resolve itself. 2 days pass and nothing changes instead now we see that it’s negative 36k. Then today i also see a charge for the account being in access. So today morning i open a chat and i’m told the transaction made on the 28th was only banked on the 6th(7 business working days later). Now i understand all of that, my issue is why was the amount deposited back into our account on the 5th with no reference or any indication why the money was in our account?

Normally reserved payments remain reserved until the payment clears. In this case this money was deposited back into our account and as a result some of it was used thinking our refund had been paid because it was 2days later after we had returned their laptops so it makes sense for the refund to be processed at that time.

Now i’m stuck with an account i can’t transact on because it’s on negative. Any money that goes in there will be used to resolve this negative balance. I am not happy with how fnb has handled this transaction. Since when have reserved transactions been paid back into accounts? Mind you as i mentioned above the funds were taken from my account and the balance was reduced when i made the payment on the 28th of Sept then all of a sudden funds are returned on the 6th, it does not make sense and from a banking process it should not happen. This is a process and control failure on FNBs part, you can’t have reserved funds moved from being reserved to being deposited back into the account. Now 7 days later you come back and tell me i did not have funds into my account? That’s an absolute lie cause i even have a pop which i sent to go rentals proving to them that i paid and based on that POP they released those machines. How would i have received that POP if i had no funds in my account? Now is it my fault that the payment made was then reversed and the money brought back into my account? Absolutely not! I did all my things correctly. Now i’m being inconvenience for FNBs failure is process controls?

I can’t be held liable for a system error on FNBs side. I would rather cancel this account and move to a different bank cause this is not how things should work. I don’t care about your internal processes and internal errors. Your internal processes are now causing problems for me and my business so if it means i cancel my account so be it. Plenty banks out there but i’m not having this. I’m tired of being the one who has understand between the two parties. Now fnb must understand. I’m also taking this to the banking ombudsman cause i did nothing wrong. The failure here is FNBs internal processes & controls.