Standard Bank un-appointed their own Bond Cancellation attorneys. You can't make this stuff up.

This is the latest in a series of mind-boggling blunders I have experienced from Standard Bank in the last few years, and the most damaging.

After the death of my father earlier in the year, my parents' house was put on the market and a sale agreement was signed in April. Standard Bank was informed of the sale by the conveyancer and appointed a firm of attorneys to attend to the cancellation of the bond, as is standard practice. This was in April or May I believe. Then, when everything was finalised at the agreed time of lodgement of the sale, at the end of September, Standard Bank suddenly decided to revoke their instruction to the attorney (who had already prepared all the necessary paperwork) and stated that the process would have to be re-done with a different firm or attorneys as the original firm (WHO THEY THEMSELVES APPOINTED) was not on their list of firms allowed to handle deceased estates. Now we wait, in bureaucratic limbo.

Standard Bank should never have made such an elementary error in the first place, but having done so, they added insult in injury by doing nothing to rectify it in the intervening four months. This is now costing us hugely because there is a contingent purchase agreement which is being delayed and as a result my mother is already R 15 000 out of pocket in occupational rent which she is now obliged to pay, plus a similar amount in lost interest from from the proceeds of the sale.

Sadly I'm becoming quite used to this pathetic bungling from Standard Bank. Earlier in the process of winding up my father's estate they manged to close down my brother's bank account instead of my late father's. Bear in mind that my late dad was a loyal customer of probably around 50 years standing with Standard Bank, who never missed a payment and from whom they earned literally millions in interest from this same homeloan account. Now we understand that the papers are sitting at Standard Bank waiting to be signed off, we know not when. It is frankly an insult.