STBB HELDERBERG A HORROR SHOW

TL;DR Dreadful overall but going to their office to sign documents felt like entering the last enclave of the Broederbond meets The Hills Have Eyes. I actually felt unsafe there and fled as soon as I could.

Nightmare from day one. The app I was forced to use and pay for as a locked-in buyer is so poorly designed it came with an instruction manual, the conveyancing secretary I dealt with told me to read their endless badly written copy when I had questions, and some conveyancers shouldn't be allowed a client-facing role.

The one assigned to me made signing transfer documents feel like an interrogation. He said, and I quote, 'Now where did the money [to buy property] come from?' After staring at me with a weird (dumbfounded?) expression for far too long. It was very uncomfortable and incredibly inappropriate. Of course I ultimately repeated what I'd written on the documents I'd sent in via the useless app.

Are small cash purchases uncommon? Was it ***ism? Lack of social skills? The general lack of talent that makes legal work a not very lucrative career... for some? It's a pity.

In return for what surely must be a questionable insistence on downloading and using an unwanted app I was given a very small amount of storage I could use over a lifetime. Questionable in terms of consumer rights... It was probably worth less than R5 on AWS.

Also re the app, one more highlight. They claimed I was to use it as it was secure. Even when an app glitch meant I couldn't upload a document in the same format, via the same browser, as all the others, they were reluctant to let me use Gmail. I requested to use Gmail multiple times because the app added work for me instead of streamlining. They refused to allow it. The irony is, my Gmail account has two-factor authentication as a minimum. Of course their app does not.

Despite apparent suspicions around the origin of my income they were, of course, quite happy to be overpaid for their shocking service.