One hand does not know what the other hand is doing.

The reason for writing this Hellopeter review is pure frustration that Standard Bank has bul**** us around, ignored (glossed over) my complaints that I lodged with the Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre, their attorneys have terrorised us and for almost a year we had endless sleepless nights about losing the roof over our heads. It is also impossible to complain to the Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre, because they don’t deal with the complaints, or maybe they don’t understand the complaints. All of this came about because a Standard Bank employee forgot to process our payment holiday application in 2021 and then Standard Bank brought a High Court case against us intimating that the bank and their agents have been unable to make contact with us. The High Court case was brought against us during a time that we have been in constant contact with Standard Bank. The Standard Bank attorneys at a later stage tried to strong-arm us into dropping our intention to defend ourselves against Standard Bank in the High Court case they had brought against us. After it became abundantly clear that the one department at Standard Bank does not know what the other department is doing, we eventually took our matter to the Banking Ombudsman. Banking Ombudsman I lodged a complaint with the Banking Ombudsman against Standard Bank about the poor treatment my wife and I received from them over a prolonged period since mid-2021 with regard to our bond account. The Banking Ombudsman emailed me in April 2023 saying amongst other things that Standard Bank acknowledges that there was a “breakdown in communications” (quoted directly from the Banking Ombudsman email). This is an excerpt from the email I received from the Banking Ombudsman: “In accordance with our conservative guidelines, this office does not consider making liberal awards for distress and inconvenience. Perhaps contrary to expectations, awards for distress and inconvenience are assessed very conservatively by our office and are not awarded for the enrichment of the complainant. Such awards are meant to be a humble token of goodwill to appease the discord between the bank and the customer. Furthermore, awards for distress and inconvenience are only made in a minority of cases, considering the merits of the case. Bearing in mind this office’s conservative guidelines, the bank agreed to a R1 000.00 distress and inconvenience award. “ The Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre The Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre has refused to provide an Ombudsman Referral Letter for ‘complaint no.2’ saying that the letter they provided for ‘complaint no.1’ was sufficient. A very frustrating thing that we experienced in dealing with the Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre was that they completely refused to address our complaints and chose to focus on the state of our bond account. We were not complaining about the state of our bond account, we were complaining about their poor service and the incompetence of their staff in dealing with our matter. We logged two separate complaints with the Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre. Complaint no.1 Complaint no.1 was logged with the Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre on 17 March 2022. Complaint no.1 is specifically related to a Standard Bank employee forgetting to process our payment holiday application and then apologising almost four months later saying that she and her family were sick with Covid 19, therefore she did not process our payment holiday application. Complaint no.2 Complaint no.2 was logged with the Standard Bank Complaints Resolution Centre on 18 August 2022. Complaint no.2 is related explicitly to Standard Bank opening a High Court case against us where they allege that Standard Bank, their debt collectors and their attorneys were not able to make contact with us and that we were ignoring their attempts to contact us. This High Court case was brought against us at the same time that the Standard Bank legal people were in the process of making payment arrangements with us. This was a typical example of the one hand not knowing what the other hand was doing. To this day we are still paying our bond following these payment arrangements. The High Court Case We opted to defend ourselves in the High Court case that Standard Bank brought against us and served the notice of the High Court's ’Intention to Defend’ papers on the Standard Bank attorney's offices. On 20 September 2022, we received an email from the Standard Bank attorneys with a settlement agreement that they wanted us to sign and return to them and also asked us to supply them with a High Court ‘Withdrawal of the Notice of Intention to Defend’ document. We rep**** to the Standard Bank attorneys that Standard Bank should withdraw the case that they brought against us and not us to withdraw from defending ourselves in court against them. Standard Bank was at fault for taking two different conflicting actions against it. The Standard Bank attorney that dealt with this wrote very threatening and intimidating emails to us trying to force us to drop our High Court defence against Standard Bank. This Standard Bank attorney treated us with great antagonistic arrogant disdain. Up to this date, we still do not know what the situation is with this High Court case because of the manner in which we were treated by this attorney. Pain and suffering Standard Bank has really put us through hell this year with all their threats and ************. The pain and suffering that we suffered were extreme and we went through endless sleepless nights worrying that we would lose our place to live. We would have been better off if the person who forgot to process our payment holiday request had just told us that they were not able to assist us when we app****. Instead, they chose to put us through hell. We initially made the first successful payment holiday application in August 2020 because both my wife and I got very sick with severe Covid 19. My wife also could not go back to work because she was taking care of me at the time (besides being sick with Covid 19 herself) and eventually lost her job because we were both sick. At the time of our first payment holiday application in August 2020, we were made to understand by the Standard Bank staff that there was enough equity in our property to see us through a long period of payment holidays if necessary. Throughout all our financial woes we were in constant contact with Standard Bank regarding our financial state, and we expected much better treatment from them because we have been good payers of our bond with Standard Bank for more than twenty years. The High Court case really came to us as a shock because we were so good at communicating with Standard Bank. And now this court case is saying Standard Bank could not make contact with us. We have endless and constant email communication with Standard Bank and their attorneys as proof. What do we want from the bank? We want the High Court case to be withdrawn by Standard Bank. We want Standard Bank to remove all the legal fees and additional charges from our bond account because they made the mistake of taking legal action against us because they claimed they could not make contact with us at the same that they were in constant contact with us. We want some type of compensation for the many months of sustained pain and suffering that Standard Bank put us and our families through. The one thousand Rand that the Banking Ombudsman awarded us does not even begin to compensate us for the hell they put us through. This is another excerpt from the email I received from the Banking Ombudsman when they ruled in our favour: “We can only suggest that you seek legal advice, at your own cost, if you want to claim compensation for consequential damages through a court of law.” We are now actively seeking pro bono legal advice and we are exploring our options. We are not deluding ourselves into believing that we a not in a ‘David and Goliath’ situation here. We know how powerful Standard Bank and its attorneys are because we have suffered severely at their hands over the past two years. It is unfair that we should be bul**** around by a financial giant the way they bul**** us around after paying a bond with them for almost twenty years.