Bank clients seeing red over ‘double’ deductions

AFTER festive season splurging left many purses almost empty, Capitec Bank clients were put under further pressure when their December purchases were only deducted at the weekend when shop-owners did their banking.

The bank received numerous complaints from disgruntled clients querying the seemingly double deductions for purchases made about two weeks before Christmas. On Sunday, hundreds of angry clients flocked to their respective branches demanding answers as they thought they had been double-billed after getting SMSes notifying them of their purchases.

But South Africa’s fastest growing bank said card purchases from December 13 to 18 at Absa-supported machines were only processed and deducted from Saturday.

On its Facebook page yesterday, the bank posted this explanatory message to the more that 60 000 people who “like” it: “We can confirm that all these transactions debited late on our clients’ accounts were done at Absa-supported card machines during the period 13 to 18 December 2012. In particular the majority of these transactions occurred at retailers supported by Absa and who have the card machine integrated into their own till systems.”

While the late submission of point of sale transactions by Absa was “unusual”, it was “not outside the interbank card system rules”, the bank said yesterday.

“We do need to reiterate that no Capitec Bank client had a double deduction of the same amount on their account,” they said.

Thembakazi Gofo of New Brighton was not so convinced, however, saying she was certain her balance had gone down when the first notification came through.

“I got an SMS early on Saturday morning to say I had spent R330 and R172 at the Checkers Hyper in Centurion [Gauteng],” she said. “But the first time I got the SMS, my balance had gone down and they claimed that it was an error. This is quite hard for me to accept because I always know what I spend. I check my balance after each transaction.”

An agent at the bank’s call centre, who identified herself only as Mbali, said during card purchases, the bank deducted the money from the client’s account and set it aside for the merchant to “collect”.

“So when the clients got the SMS the first time, it was because the bank had set it aside, but not necessarily deducted it.”