1 reviews | Active since Mar 2009
Another Standard Bank Failure - Penny wise and pound foolish
I am forced to be with Standard Bank insurance because of a home loan and it feels like they are taking advantage of that fact. The first time I claimed, they actually paid. That was the first and last encouraging thing. Heavy rains caused the ceiling to leak. However, the contractor they sent messed up a new paint job I had paid a lot for. In the last four or so years since then, Standard Bank has not taken responsibility for the contractor. Then more rains happened and part of the drain pipe came down. Standard Bank said it was maintenance, two years or so after I moved into the place, PVC piping was a maintenance issue after heavy rain? I paid a plumber to fix it. Then sewage came up in my back yard. It was urgent, so I paid a plumber to clear it. When I tried to claim from the insurance, they refused, saying I should have contacted them first. When it happened again, I contacted them and they sent someone out, who did the same as the plumber I had hired and who misdiagnosed the problem. The problem kept recurring. I ended up paying a builder over R40000 to fix the problem once and for all, no thanks to the expert contractors Standard Bank sends. Then the heavry rains came again and I noticed my fireplace had started to rust overnight. I contacted Standard Bank because I was worried about the problem getting worse quickly. It took them weeks to actually send someone and to get back to me. In the time since then, the problem has gotten worse and there is more rust on the fireplace and the rain damaged the ceiling. Standard Bank now phones me to reject the claim and say this is maintenance. How is it that Standard Bank says I must wait for them but when I do, that waiting causes more damage the fireplace and now also to the ceiling. There was no damage to the ceiling when I first alerted Standard Bank to the issue and expressed my grave concern. Do not fix something yourself because they will not pay but if there is a problem and you call them, it is maintenance. This feels like a very dishonest operation. And will Standard Bank stop contacting me without my permission about marketing nonsense? You treated my family like dirt when handling my father's deceased estate. You refused to give my mother her proper due when she retired as a Standard Bank pensioner by not disclosing significant information. My sister has tried to get my deceased father's gun sorted out legally but the same person that was part of the mess with my father's estate, after months, has not rep**** to an e-mail we sent her regarding the gun. In an online meeting one day with your Estates division, one of the people in your team laughed at me. Now Standard Bank insurance keeps failing me. I have also alerted Standard Bank many times to the fact that your Internet banking dates are often wrong, where people pay things in the future using some magical time machine, only to have those dates changed later. How do you trust a bank that cannot get transaction dates consistently right, and then even changes them sometimes? Then you have your so-called personal banking division where the only person that seemed to do their job left long ago, and the division has failed ever since. Did that division run because of only one person? Then the travel insurance was going to refuse to give insurance to someone because the journey did not start and end in South Africa, so I took that business away from Standard Bank. So, Standard Bank saved, maybe R1000, and lost R30000 in business. That was a great business decision, again. Then I sent Standard Bank a question about doing an international EFT. Instead of helping, they brushed me off and said I must contact the forex division. If they were unable to help, they could at least have said they have asked the forex division to answer the query but they were too lazy to do that. I e-mailed the forex division days ago but they have not bothered to reply. As far as possible, I give my business to other institutions wherever I can and I do not buy new products from Standard Bank and will continue to do so because Standard Bank clearly does not care and refuses to listen over and over.
