Theft of money due to computer error.

When one eventually gets to work with a customer service person they are friendly and helpful. One can wait for 45 mins to 3 hours to have one's problem addressed, but It's not their fault branches are short staffed. on a Saturday one can walk out at 2 p,m. This can't be good for staff morale.

The 'phone app has serious problems and I usually don't use it for daily banking because it's so clumsy. My current experience has revealed a procedure that should be ******* and I hope the banking ombudsman takes hold of it. The background is I needed to pay an artisan and the money was to go into the account asap as they banked with Standard. Hence I relented and tried to make payment. My major hassle with this app is it doesn't have a list of beneficiaries - every time one pays a person, no matter how frequently, one is required to type in all the details of payee's account name, bank and account number. I had paid this person a few times in the past but typed in the name and account number and the amount. I checked that there were 3 groups of 3 digits. My other bank uses 10. I pressed pay. The money didn't go through and the payee notified me. Calls back and forth ensued and I went into the bank. After a few days it was worked out the money had gone into someone else's account. I filled in the appropriate form to reverse the transaction and retrieve my money and I was told to come back on Monday.

I'll cut the saga; suffice to say I was told I'd put in only 8 digits. Later I was told a computer had added a zero to what I'd typed in because the number was short. WHAT? A machine is allowed to choose to send my money to any account it chooses by adding a digit???? I've never heard of such careless ********ity. No. You inform the customer the number is faulty and to please check. You don't programme a machine to arbitrarily add digits.

On Monday I was told the money had been taken out of the account and there were insufficient funds to reverse the transaction. I filled in another form requesting Standard Bank to pursue the matter. I was told they could contact the person and request the repayment.

Today I'm told the bank washes its hand of the case. They refuse to take responsibility for their computer error. They say there must have a warning message in small print that the account was for someone other than the Name I'd entered. In small print? After your computer has added a digit that sends my money to an unknown account? I don't think so.