Help lift the veil on virtual mysteries

I NEED help penetrating the dark world that is Standard (virtual) Bank.

In mid-2016, I made an investment in their “Share Plus” scheme. You may indeed recall the huge roadside billboards advertising the scheme.

The problem (challenge, in South African-speak) is that I am unable to get the promised documentation pertaining to the investment and its conditions.

A round half-dozen visits to the Greenstone (Edenvale) branch and the inevitable interviews with “consultants” have produced nothing more than computer printouts showing the investment exists and, importantly, that the Fica process was for nought as, for some obscure reason, old, redundant, pre-Fica information resurfaced on their system.

This allegedly resulted in all correspondence, notifications and the documents I am looking for being sent to an incorrect address. Not one of these kind consultants is able to do anything about this, albeit retrieving it from a physical file – for surely it must have been returned by the SA Post Office as undeliverable – or regenerating it.

Website “contact us” and “customer care” lines produced no useful response.

My great concern is, who now has these documents and how will I be able to claim my investment and its proceeds?

Please can you attempt to at least get me a name of a (real) person that I may go to see to get this matter resolved.

Asking to see THE or A manager is met with blank stares.

It seems no such person with the concomitant authority, responsibility and accountability exists.

Standard Bank, it seems, is merely a virtual presence existing only in cyberspace or in a parallel universe, with the “branch” merely a portal and me lost in the matrix…

To add insult to injury, a couple of days ago I was given the e-mail address of a Standard Bank employee who indicated that I may approach her to see if she could be of assistance – I shall withhold her name, as I do not have those of the other “consultants” with whom I dealt.

Great was my disappointment (although admittedly I was not much surprised) when her reply came, telling me she cannot identify me and to phone yet another 0860 number. The full text of my e-mail to her and her reply follows below, which I think speaks for itself.

I will not bore you with the machinations one went through to get the money into the investment in the first place; suffice to say that in the beginning there was the Fica rigmarole, before being accepted.

A process covering about six weeks and all “negotiations” conducted via the now popular system of “choose a number” and play “musical chairs” until getting to see a very friendly and helpful “consultant” but never the same one in succession, who has not a shred of understanding.

One is left with the impression that a “consultant” is fed immense amounts of data, yet is given no information and thus gains no knowledge, is given absolutely no discretion, and initiative is anathema.

This ensures regimented, soulless responses at the Pavlovian level. An experience which leaves one flummoxed.