Home loan shortfall

<p>We had our home loan account with Standard Bank and were informed by the transferring attorneys that there might be shortfall (+- 40k) on our home loan, when we sold our house in 2015. "Don't worry," they said. The bank will contact you and will arrange repayment thereof so you can agree on an affordable monthly installment, if there is still a shortfall after transfer takes place. So transfer takes place and we heard nothing from the bank in the next month and half. I decide to contact them at the beginning of Feb 2016 to find out what's going on and if there's still a shorfall that we need to repay. You have to phone the call centre in JHB for home loan queries, and can't just walk into a branch and expect it to resolved by a consultant, since they also need to phone the home loan call centre. The callcentre lady had a look on their system and saw that the account was closed and that there was no outstanding balance. Great news as she confirms there's no shortfall (which seemed to consist of STD bank charges and fees in any case). At the end of June 2016, my husband receives an sms stating that an amount was deducted from his account to settle an shortfall amount that was in arrears. Standard bank decided to deduct R9,5k from his account without informing him. As if a normal person has an extra R9,5k a month to throw around!!! </p> <p>Furious, he phones them and the confused call centre consultant told him that they can't see that the house was sold and according to them, we are still the owners of this property. How, I ask you? After sending through the OTP and other documents, they clicked that we don't own the house and now claims that the deduction they made from his account (without his permission or informing him) was because of a shortfall on our home loan account we had with them. A shorfall that didn't exist at the beginning of the year, has re-appeared all of a sudden. Nobody from Std Bank contacted us after I spoke to them in Feb so how does a shorfall dissapear and re-appear without being informed about it. They undertook to refund the R9,5K, but that still hasn't happened. I also sent them two emails asking how a shortfall can dissapear and re-appear and when and how they informed us about it, but have not received any response. Not that it surprises me, because when we phone their recoveries dept, they transfer you to the legal debt, and the legal dept transfers you back to the recoveries dept. iit seems like nobody knows how to assist me. So who deals with this? 7 days and no response. Will this happen again next month, I ask, and what is going on with their system so nobody can help you when you call them?</p>