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Customers who used their bank cards to pay for fuel at a Pietermaritzburg garage are reeling financially after their accounts were debited in duplicate dozens of times, resulting in collective losses of more than R42 000.
Townhill community policing forum chairperson Darryl Schoeman, who has been collating complaints from affected bank customers, said his nightmare began after he paid R600.09 for fuel at the BP Cascades on 21 October.
“This transaction only reflected on my account on 26 October. On 29 October at 10.40am, I drew a transaction report to keep for my bank reconciliations. At that time, only transactions up to the 26th were showing, the BP transaction and a balance of only R32.09,” Schoeman said.
“When I opened my banking app to put funds in for my wife to make a purchase, I saw that I was in arrears of over R11 000. Upon investigation, I saw that the BP transaction of 26 October had repeated on 28 October, with the exact same reference number, with an additional 18 transactions with new reference numbers, all running in sequential order.
“I simply accepted the incident as a system error and went through to the service station where I met another lady, Yoga Maharaj, who was also there to raise the issue. We were informed by the staff that we were about the 15th person,” he said.
Schoeman said he had alerted the garage owner to the incidents and she had been working tirelessly this week to help the affected customers to get a refund.
“I reported the incident to my bank, FNB, who informed me that I needed to fill in a dispute form which was emailed to me. I filled the form in and emailed it to them with the required evidence,” Schoeman said.
He also cancelled his FNB bank card on 30 October to prevent further unauthorised debits.
But on 31 October when he checked his account, a further 15 duplicate transactions, which were not there the day before, suddenly reflected as having been processed on 29 October.
“My account was now R20 403.06 overdrawn. These additional transactions had been processed after my card was cancelled,” Schoeman said.
“I always maintain a close to zero balance in my account in order to avoid any possible fraudulent transactions. I maintain this vigilance to ensure that I cannot be defrauded but this seems to not be good enough.”
Schoeman added that he does not have an overdraft facility on the account and asked why the bank had not declined the transactions due to insufficient funds.
“The bank might argue that they are working to reverse the ‘erroneous’ transactions but these should not have taken place in the first place.
“What better safeguard to have than to have no money in your account to be stolen and yet this has proven not to be sufficient to be safe from fraudulent transactions,” he said.
“I do not feel that any bank is safe anymore. They tell us that virtual cards linked to Google Wallet tap-to-pay is the safest, preferred form of payment and yet this has been severely compromised.
“I feel extremely vulnerable and have reverted to withdrawing cash to pay for goods now as I don’t know which system, which bank, which merchant, is going to be compromised.
“I am one of the lucky ones in that my personal funds were still safe. But what about those who are not as vigilant? Their real money would have been taken out with them being unable to pay for food or transport or emergency medical services, if necessary. This could have proven to be catastrophic.”
Schoeman said he was still waiting for the transactions to be reversed.
However, he said FNB emailed him on 31 October stating: “Please accept our apologies for duplicates that were processed on your account for the disputed amounts. Please note the merchant has acknowledged their mistake and duplicate amounts will be reversed.”
Maharaj said her account had incurred 34 debits of R150 on 29 and 30 October amounting to R5 100. She complained to her bank, FNB, and to the garage, but is still waiting for a reversal.
“If you’re conducting a point-of-sale transaction, you have to use your pin number to authenticate a single transaction. How were these funds taken off our account without that security comfort?” Maharaj wondered.
“The bank is supposed to keep clients’ funds safe, not abuse their trust to this extent. I have had a very emotional time with this issue, as all my debit orders have been dishonoured, placing my insurance at risk. What if I have a claim? Insurers also do not accept electronic funds transfer payments anymore.”
Another customer, Amanda Ganguloo, said she had bought fuel worth R500 and the debit had reflected on 28 October.
“Thereafter, my account was debited 34 times. In total R17 000 was erroneously debited from my account,” she said.
“So far, I have received no refund at all and no reversal of even one of the debits. This was a terrible experience and I know it’s one that many South Africans fall victim to.
“The money is so easily taken from us but to get any recompense takes paperwork and sometimes weeks. I have been told that 26 people are in this unfortunate situation.”
Ganguloo said she had disputed the transactions with FNB which advised her to contact the garage owner for a refund.
“When I did contact [the owner], she was helpful and stated that this was a case of a technical issue with that particular speed point they were using at the service station. She stated that this was a systems error on the Standard Bank side and that she had contacted BP management and Standard Bank,” Ganguloo said.
“This has been a very stressful and frustrating experience. Essentially, the money that was stolen, you have to find a way to replace so that debit orders can be paid. In the tough economic climate we face in South Africa not everyone has savings accounts or emergency funds to use in a crisis.”
Neither FNB, Standard Bank, the BP head office nor the BP Cascades garage had responded to questions from the Mail & Guardian at the time of publication on Friday.