The incompetence of Nedbank MFC

A bit more than one year ago, I was involved with helping my tenants to buy a small motor vehicle. In this case, the financial organisation involved is MFC which is a division of Nedbank.

The problems started in the very first month after initial payment where MFC messed up the date of the debit order and tried to withdraw money on a date when there was no money on the account. This had repercussions down the line because of being behind with payments according to MFC when in the meantime, the debit order happened before salary was paid into the account. Multiple attempts to correct this debit order date have failed. Payments are done manually every month since then.

Another major annoyance is when asking at the bank, the bank says that payments are up to date, but MFC calls me about payments being in arrears. This is a timing issue as far as I can tell. The arrears amount suddenly showed up even when the statement shows payments were done.

Lately, MFC has decided to call me daily, always a different person on the phone. After a verification process, I end up having to tell that person the long saga. A few times I have been told to send an email to a particular email address to get a consent form. I tried that four times over months with no response while the calls keep on coming. The consent form is needed to allow MFC calling the person who does the payments.

Recently, I started sending complaints, sent inquiries and emailed the specified email address daily. After three days, I suddenly had three people responding by email. Even after sending the third party details, I still end up getting daily calls.

All that MFC seems to see is that payments are in arrears. That monthly payments happen, seems to be ignored. They also do not seem to be happy with the plan to pay more monthly in order to get rid of this mysterious arrears amount. They call me daily about payment, while a plan is in place to sort out their mess, but they punish me for it.

If I had known that MFC has an antiquated silo system and does not stick to their own system, I would have avoided them completely.

Update 15 January 2018:
The call center people have yet again started calling me weekly. Nobody seems to tell them about the consent form that I filled in and sent.

Original publish date: 23 November 2017