Just under 2 years ago I moved my bank account from Standard Bank to Nedbank. Not because I thought that Nedbank was better, but because their Savvy account was about R130pm less than the Standard Bank equivalent.
So far I have been a reasonably satisfied customer – until last week that is. I needed to change an internet payment amount and this meant a trip into the bank – over half an hour waiting in a queue. They were short staffed and the one of the 2 tellers that was on duty was a trainee – the manager was running around doing her best to remedy the situation but I needed to deal with a teller – sorry for you. Things happened – eventually…
The next day I was in town and needed to draw cash urgently – fortunately there was a Nedbank ATM nearby…unfortunately the queue was unreasonably long. The reason – one of the 2 ATM’s was down. So I went into the branch and was told that they would charge me R30 to make an over-the-counter cash withdrawal (excluding the fee per amount). It was cheaper (by far) to find another bank’s ATM. How is it that it is so much more expensive to provide me with cash from a teller than from a machine? Things “happened” alright… but not what client service managers would want.
Then on Friday I arrived home to find an unsolicited “offer” in the post from Nedbank for a “financial workout”. Rather than the financial assessment that I thought it might be and that would be beneficial to already stretched consumers, it turns out that this is an offer for a personal loan from Nedbank. The “workout” would come from me spending…the more I spend, the better the “workout”. This offer was, of course, covered by all the usual PR and BS about responsible lending. It’s not going to “happen”!
And if these 3 are not enough, the final straw is Nedbank not granting a home loan to a client of ours who has been a client of theirs for over 25 years. Apparently they are not happy that the client earns commission (and has done so for the past 11 years). They don’t know how to “deal” with it – apparently the track record at the bank is not enough. No one at the bank could “make things happen”. In the meanwhile, a competitor bank has “made things happen” and the loan has been granted!
I moved banks because of cheaper fees…turns out Capitec might just be cheaper than Nedbank. I’m off to investigate!
