Very disappointed!

I have been banking with FNB for 23 years. This month, I have to say I am not proud to be an FNB customer at all. Due to the COVID-19 national lockdown, my employer has implemented 50% pay cuts across the board, for all its employees. This means that I am unable to fulfil some of my financial obligations and I thought I would take up the offer from my bank for a payment holiday until the situation has normalised, which was estimated to be roughly three months. The repayment in question, was for a personal loan on which I make monthly repayments of R1586.07 per month. I contacted the FNB call centre and was told to use the COVID-19 function in the mobile application to apply for this. As I went through the motions within the app, I came to the realisation that this process was in fact to apply for an additional loan, and not the payment holiday I had asked for. Strangely, the terms of this particular loan were not even up to me – FNB had decided that they would lend me R18 333.52 over a period of 60 months, which is nowhere near what I wanted - to pause my personal loan repayments for three months (this amounts to R4 758, not R18 333). What frustrates me even more, is the fact that FNB has already deducted the personal loan instalment today, 24 April 2020 - three days before the debit order was due to go off. One would think that if a debit order date happens to fall on a public holiday, then the deduction should go off on the following day, or even the day thereafter. As it stands, the implication is that they have taken the last money from my cheque account and I will only be paid 50% of my salary on payday. Fortunately, I can use my credit card to take this blow, but there are others who do not have this safety net. I am not the only person who is frustrated by FNB’s handling of the COVID-19 situation. Some of my co-workers have had to resort to taking second mortgages on their homes just to ease their temporary financial problems, it is not ideal to incur more debts in the form of loans and mortgages to deal with a three month loss of income. Other banks in this country are more than happy to offer this benefit to their clients, why can’t FNB – which I used to think was one of the best in South Africa.