Nedbank Norhmead Square - The Grinch that stole Christmas

Fica Nightmare – Took more than 3 weeks, 10 hours in bank, numerous trips, phone calls and emails, to re-activate account, with almost no help from the staff at Nedbank Northmead Square.

I received a sms from Nedbank notifying me that I need to Fica my account. Knowing that my Fica is in order I ignored the sms. A while after this my parents business account (which I have power of attorney over) was frozen, the sms was meant for them. After a few trips, emails, and a fight with our bookkeeper all documents were handed in and the account was "unfrozen" Two weeks later the family left for our December holiday. When trying to purchase something on holiday we realised the account was frozen again. On Tuesday the 27th of December I left our holiday home at the Vaal to go into the branch in Benoni to find out what was going on. At the branch (after an hour and half wait) I spoke to Boetie from small business banking, he said that the lady my parents worked with previously (Gloria) was on leave and he will assist me. He went to "phone" Gloria. Returning he notified me that the account was frozen again because they Fica'd our Trust account instead of the business account. I explained that this is impossible as the documents we handed in was for our business account. After "phoning" Gloria again he came back saying that some documents are still outstanding. I said that this is impossible as they would not have lifted the hold on the account the first time if documents were outstanding. Eventually a lady come in and put some documents on the table, we went through them and saw that it was some of our documents, so Boetie said I need to go back to the office and get the outstanding docs. I refused as I could not see why I should go through the whole process again I asked that he should phone Gloria again and just ask her where the other documents were. He said that Gloria was the lady that put the documents on the table and she said that that is all she's got. All of a sudden Gloria was not on leave anymore, she was in the branch the whole time but being on leave she was not seeing customers. I respected this, but felt that it would not be fair to go back to get all the documents AGAIN. At this point the story changed for the third time, this time Boetie told me that there are two legs of Fica and we only did one so I will have to go back to fetch the documents again. I asked to see someone else who would be able to assist me, he took me to a man who he said was the supervisor. After explaining the whole story The supervisor called the Fica office asking them how they can freeze an account that was unfrozen two weeks earlier. I could not hear the whole conversation, but the supervisor apologised and said that I would have to bring in all the documents again. On my way out I stopped at Gloria asking her for 5 minutes of her time. Eventually she said if we can get a certificate from the CIPC website she will Fica the account. After registering with CIPC I had to wait for my payment to go through. By this time it was 16:15 and the bank closed at 16:00 so after spending 5 hours in the bank I went home to print the certificate. The next day (after waiting for another hour) I gave the certificate to Boetie who said he already sent in all the other documents and he will send the certificate immediately. He said the account will be unfrozen within the same day or the next day. By 1 o'clock the following day I went back because the account was still frozen, again I sat in the waiting area for an hour, and there was another person in the queue that was also waiting to see Boetie. She has already been there for an hour and a half, by this time I realised that I am going to sit in the bank for at least another hour before seeing Boetie and we were planning on going back to our holiday destination which we left 3 days earlier to sort out this mess. I apologized at his cubicle peeked in and (out of desperation) threatened to close all 7 our Nedbank accounts if the issue is not resolved by 7 o'clock that same day. After 7 the account was still frozen and I phoned the Nedbank call centre. Riana at the call centre asked that we would phone at 9 the following morning to see if the Fica office were open. I phoned them and they notified me that there are still documents outstanding. I explained to them that I have handed in all documents at the bank (twice) they said they can not do anything if the bank does not send through these documents. I phoned the call centre again and they gave me the email address of the regional manager. I emailed her and got an automated reply saying she was on leave and I can phone the person standing in for her. I phoned this number but never got any answer, left a voice mail, but no one ever came back to me. By this time it was new years already. This problem stretched over Christmas and New years. I completely understand that most of the staff was on leave during this time, but all of this started well before, and if the staff did their job right from the start, we would not have spend New years and Christmas not being able to access our account.

After New years Boetie phoned me notifying that the account was unfrozen. Without an apology or an explanation. I don’t think they understand what other problems they caused, none of our customers could pay into this account in this time, leaving us with a mess that we are still trying to sort out.

We keep with out threat that we will be moving our 7 accounts (some of which we have had for 30 years) to FNB, especially seeing that our bank charges will reduce with more than half. You need to be a Nedbank customer to understand how ridiculous their bank charges are, especially for the poor service they gave us. It was so sad to see how many unhappy customers were seeing the bankers during the 4 days that I spend sitting in the bank. They have open cubicles so you can hear every word spoken in the hour and a half that you sit and wait to see someone, and its quite embarrassing to have every thing you say heard by the person in the next cubicle. I had to laugh when one of Nedbank’s other customers started showing the banker photos of his employees that had to go home for Christmas without money because there was a problem with their business account, but these are the kind of things you do out of desperation when you work with people who refuse to help you.

Apart from our 7 accounts that we will be closing, my 3 brothers are also threatening to close the 7 accounts between them. Yes it is going to be a mayor schlep to close and move 14 accounts, but as soon as the beginning of the year rush is over this is something we will have to do. If Nedbank is the Grinch that *****s Christmas, it will be up to us to make sure we are not with them before the next Christmas comes around.