A nightmare called Nedbank

Nedbank will likely deny this till the cows come home, but the truth is they pocketed a large sum from my company 10 days ago and wouldn’t give it back until, in desperation, I asked my journalist wife to rattle their cage. Suddenly, things started to happen.

Which raises the question: if you don’t have access to media muscle, how on earth do you get the attention of these people?

When I spotted this Robin Hood-in-reverse heist, repeated calls to my branch manager elicited much sympathy and promises of action, but there was no action. Bizarrely, they insisted that before they could act I fax them a letter “authorising” Nedbank to return to me the very funds they had taken without my permission!

Which I did. And they didn’t.

This Kafkaesque scenario played itself out for over a week. Each day I would phone the branch to inquire why the money hadn’t been returned and each time I would get the “we’ll call you back” treatment. Which they didn’t.

When I finally did get some action out of their card division, the unit which had seized my cash, they denied receiving any instruction from the branch to return the money. Either the manager of Nedbank’s flagship branch is a bare-faced liar or their card division comprises total bullshit artists. Or the lines of communication inside the bank are so crossed that no one know really knows what’s going on. I suspect the latter.

Now I wait to see whether Nedbank will pay me the interest they owe me on the money they helped themselves to. I will donate the interest to a charity if I actually do get it as I really want this bad-karma monkey off my back. Suggestions welcome.

Meantime, so weird is Nedbank at handling customer complaints that if you phone their head office and ask for the name of the CEO of their card division, or any other division, I guess, people on the switchboard will clam up and refuse to tell you. Incredible as it seems, it’s apparently company policy not to divulge the names of their top execs, even though the names are all neatly listed on the bank’s website. I wonder who got paid what to figure out this sophisticated and subtle PR strategy? (For the record, Sydney Gericke is head of Nedbank card division).