Wednesday, October 03, 2007

The name is Bank, Absa Bank.

Hello hello... welcome to my friendly corner store. How may I help you today?

You're wanting to make use of my service? Gladly! That'll be a R31,90 sign up fee.
Please... please... come in!

What are you actually needing from me? Loo paper and soap? Ah, the basics then. I'll get them from the back room just as soon as you've confirmed your finger print, your residential address and signature here. Thank you, thank you very much! Just one more thing... if I can just have a drop of saliva... thank you again, sir.

Right, let me see about that loo paper and soap... oh, I'm afraid our soap is on back order and is unavailable at the moment. How would you like to be notified of its arrival: by email, fax or sms? The charges are as follows: sms R2, fax R0.50 and email R0,60. Email? Right you are, sir. It's a wise choice.

That'll be R15,15 in total for the loo paper. Would you like a receipt with that? It will cost an extra R3,35 and we'll be needing a sample of your fingernail for cross-checking.

What? You don't think this is a good way for running a business? No, I don't think it's out of order to charge you every time I do my job for a service that you have already paid to receive. Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, sir. You can register your complaint with our call centre between the hours of 10am-11am on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or on Wednesday from 3pm to 4pm. We're closed on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and all religious and public holidays.

Funny you should mention it though... I simply based my business on the banking system in South Africa. They seem to be doing fine.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have no idea what you are talking about? Have I been out of SA for that long?

Koekie said...

Just a rant about the fact that Absa is charging me R56 a month for doing nothing. And then they charge me more if I ask for a bank statement, make a transfer, or ask for confirmation of the fact that they have done their job and transferred the requested amount. Imagine if other companies ran their business like that?