It’s too easy for companies to pop a trite “we apologise for the inconvenience” to their customers when they’ve done them wrong. And it’s particularly galling when that wrong is a huge one.
I’m talking about a real injustice, not the kind a consumer once claimed to have suffered on spotting a whole, dead gecko in the unopened packet of muesli she’d bought. The poor creature was dramatically on display in the muesli pack’s “window”, and that caused the consumer huge distress, she said, so much so that she demanded a sizeable sum in compensation from the manufacturer. She didn’t get a cent.
Generally, awarding damages for mental distress isn’t a thing in South African law. The person who has suffered shocking treatment shouldn’t be overcompensated, or enriched, for such “intangible” losses, only the tangible ones, the principle goes. It’s different in the US, which is probably why so many locals see “pain and suffering” rand signs when a company has upset them.
Standard Bank really, really upset Melita Thauthau recently. Their “admin issue”, and what she saw as their lacklustre response when it came to light, turned her life upside down. The 2016 Hyundai Accent she bought in 2019 to use on the Bolt e-hailing platform was repossessed on January 16 by a sheriff of the court wielding a court order obtained by Standard Bank.
That was shocking for two reasons: she was up to date with her car repayments, and her car was financed by Nedbank’s MFC, not Standard Bank. My first thought, when Thauthau contacted me about a week after that event, was that she’d been sold a stolen car, a fact which hadn’t been picked up by either the dealership or Nedbank. But that wasn’t the case.
“The name and ID number on the court order are not mine, but the car details are correct,” Thauthau told me. “I pointed that out to the sheriff to keep my car, but he said he’d done his job and that I needed to speak to my bank.”
That she did, arriving unannounced at Nedbank’s Rivonia branch and making her presence felt until someone came down to talk to her.
That man promised to stop her debit order, discuss what had happened with Standard Bank, and come back to her within five days. When neither happened, she turned to me for help. “Nedbank has processed the debit order for the finance agreement on the car I don’t have, and I have no idea where it is or what condition it’s in,” she told me.
I began with MFC, which didn’t apologise for the inconvenience; instead the bank acknowledged “that our client did not receive the expected level of service and feedback from us” and apologised for that.
Preliminary indications are that Standard Bank made an error in claiming ownership of the vehicle as they released their title on it back in 2018, before the sale and purchase agreement by our client.
“Preliminary indications are that Standard Bank made an error in claiming ownership of the vehicle as they released their title on it back in 2018, before the sale and purchase agreement by our client,” the bank revealed. “The checks and due diligence MFC performed at the time of sale of the vehicle passed. At this stage, it appears that this was an administrative error on Standard Bank’s side and, as it stands, we have confirmation that the vehicle will be returned to the current rightful owner (Thauthau).”
The bank refunded her January debit order and undertook to suspend further payments until the matter was resolved. But three weeks after that sheriff forced Thauthau to relinquish her car, Standard Bank had yet to contact her. “What’s the holdup?” I asked.
The bank’s vehicle asset finance division said it regretted the “isolated incident” — Thauthau’s car was repossessed by mistake due to an “incorrect record” regarding its ownership, it said. “We are in the process of rectifying the relevant records and are expeditiously working with the MFC representative at the sheriff’s office for the return of the vehicle.
“The vehicle has been safely stored since it was collected, and we will be offering a gesture of goodwill to Melita for this unfortunate error.”
Thauthau duly got her car back, in good condition, but unsurprisingly she rejected Standard Bank’s R10,000 “goodwill” offer. “I lost more than that due to your error!” she told the bank. She demanded — and substantiated — about R28,000 for loss of Bolt earnings, plus the cost of her hospitalisation due to stress and anxiety over the illegitimately confiscated car, and another R2,000 — what she paid in alternative transport to deal with the saga.
The bank said Thauthau’s medical scheme had settled her medical bills and rejected her request for that goodwill gesture of R10,000 on top of her out-of-pocket expenses. In the end, worn down, she accepted a final Standard Bank offer of just more than R23,000.
“Standard Bank does not understand the damage, frustration, stress and anxiety they caused me, plus being treated like a criminal,” she said. “I think their apology should have come with a payment.”
The Ombudsman for Banking Services, which now falls under the Ombudsman for Financial Services Scheme, does award “distress” payments to customers who’ve been on the receiving end of shoddy treatment by their banks, though usually a fraction of what those clients feel entitled to. Good to know. But sadly, in this case Thauthau wasn’t Standard Bank’s customer.
Contact Wendy, email: consumer@knowler.co.za, X (Twitter): @wendyknowler, Facebook: wendyknowlerconsumer
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