Unacceptable Service and Portal Issues with Sanlam

I am writing to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the service I have received from Sanlam.

Firstly, my pension fund information was not linked to my Sanlam profile, and it took over a week of repeated phone calls, emails, and requests before I could reach someone. Often, I was left on hold for up to one and a half hours before eventually hanging up. After finally getting hold of a consultant after waiting for two hours, my issue was resolved in just five minutes.

However, when I logged into my portal again, I found my banking details incomplete. Since only my employer could update them, they did so. Despite this, both my employer and I received the message "Bank account verification unsuccessful" for an entire week. We made multiple phone calls and sent emails, but received no response from Sanlam. Expecting my employer to wait on hold for hours is unreasonable, as they have other important duties to attend to.

Eventually, we were notified that my bank account had been verified, but then I encountered another issue—there was an incorrect extra digit in my ID number. This ID error never existed before. My employer again had to spend considerable time correcting the mistake, requiring several hours of communication with Sanlam. To add to the frustration, my pension fund once again disappeared from my portal, though it reappeared the next morning.

This morning, after spending another one and a half hours on hold, we were told by a consultant that she could not resolve the "ID code type" issue and referred us to the technical team. My ID has since been corrected, but we are now back to where we started—there is a new issue with my banking details. The portal now shows the message "unexpected error occurred while validating your banking details." My employer received a message last Friday stating, "banking details uploaded successfully," yet the issue persists.

This experience has been extremely frustrating and time-consuming. I will never take out another product with Sanlam, and I cannot, in good conscience, recommend their services to anyone.