The joy of banks...

I'm in the mood to vent today and it's aimed at banks. I went to Standard Bank on Friday to change my address and I had all the info and paperwork I needed to get it sorted out - FICA compliant and everything. Surely this should be a reasonably straightforward process. But it's not...

Unfortunately the young chap who helped me didn't notice that the address on the form I had didn't exaclty match the supporting document. Now I understand that these things have to be perfect, but surely checking that something like this is done porperly is the simplest thing to do. Back to the point... I then got a call yesterday to say that they noticed the discrepancy and that it needed to be sorted out. It was also mentioned that if I don't I run the risk of my accounts being frozen and whatever else. This was their mistake, or what?

I then decided to head over to Nedbank to find out about student loans. There I couldn't even get the right information out of one of the consultants. He gave me some information I believed to be incoreect (this was confirmed later when I went to a different branch) and even when I double-checked with him and rephrased my question he stuck to his guns...

Now I know that there are loads of jokes that do the rounds about lawyers being parasites and I think most of us have heard a few of these jokes over the years. But honestly, I'm of the opinion that banks should be given the prime spot amongst blood-sucking parasites. They look after our money, making a profit in the process and can't even make sure that the people on their staff know what they're talking about. I don't know if I'm the only one who sees it this way, but aren't the proceeds of our money being used to pay their salaries?

In the end, one thing's for sure and that is that when they're trying to get more money out of you they'll have all their ducks in a row... I'm done... for now...