Currently I do some of my banking with ABSA and over the last couple of weeks I became dissatisfied with their service and their costs. I decided to go and see what a bank like FNB can offer me and since I spend about 90% of my day on Internet related work, I wanted to do the whole process over the Internet.
I am already an FNB Internet Banking customer since I have a FNB Business Account and a Discovery CreditCard. They have an on-line real-time application for a FNB Checking Account. On 29 May 2005 I completed all the on-line forms and also requested an overdraft facility. Remember this is a real-time facility which meant that the application should have been completed to a certain extent in real-time.
Since I asked for an overdraft I expected not to have that granted in real-time since they probably had to have some human made some decisions. Well at the end of filling out the forms nothing was done in real-time. Not even the creation of a normal check account. All that was said is that the application was referred and they will get back to me in 2 business days.
I gave them time till 2 June which was 4 business days and then phoned them. The person on the other side of the phone said that he will escalate it and somebody should phone me within 24 hours. Guess what, 24 hours later and nobody contacted me so I phoned again and again the same promise. Well it is now a couple of days later and I have not heard a whisper out of First National yet.
I cannot understand how a company can operate a business like this. Absolutely no idea what service is all about. No interest what so ever in what is best for the customer.
Well I know where I will not do my banking and I will not recommend First National Bank to anybody and I am seriously considering moving my FNB Business Account to somebody else. Just one problem that the other banks in South Africa is just as bad if not worse.