cloud 9 blog

so one of my new year resolutions was to change banks.

yesterday i decided to do just that as i have been putting it off the last few months dreading to set foot into a bank. the last straw for me was when i saw what it cost me for internet banking, transactions and admin fee for the month of december with absa. over R400! fucking ripoff! it’s been like this for a while and i just have not bothered.

after talking to people and drawing up a list of pros and cons of banks i finally ended up choosing fnb. thanks to Siviwe for finally making my mind up

i tried the whole apply online thing (as i didn’t wanna set foot into a bank) but knowing murphy, he made sure it didn’t work. so i ended up going into a branch anyways. when you apply online they say:

What you need before starting this application:

• You must be at least 18 years old
• South African ID book (bar-coded)
• Proof of income (latest payslip or last three months bank statements)

anyhoo, so that is all i took with me to the branch. when i got there after sitting in a queue for about 15 min i got helped and then they asked me i need to have a “proof of address”. now with me not wanting to come back tomorrow i said i’ll try make a plan quick and they said when i come again i can just go straight to a consultant. (they told me any statement will do) so i was walking around thinking and thought, ooooo, internet cafe, went there, printed a statement of something and went back to the bank only for them to tell me this ain’t good enough cause it’s not “stamped” or anything. at this stage i was hot and sweaty from running around and was not about to give up. so i went to absa and got a proper statement that was stamped. got back to fnb and we were ready to go! make no mistake, they are friendly and very helpful. it felt very weird though whenever i went back and could go straight through to a consultant as the queue was long and i was the only white guy. lol.

if it were not for the cricket on the televisions, i think i would have gone nuts. application went smooth, just a tad long as they had minor technical issues with their systems towards the end. hopefully now i won’t spend over R400 in bank charges and whatnots…now it’s a flat fee of R89 and you can do unlimited transactions as long as you stick to the manner you need to do them.

one thing that i did notice is, with absa, there are tellers almost everywhere you go, fnb not as much which MIGHT suck. but to be honest, i hardly ever carry cash on me, i only use my cards whereever i go. one of my favorite things about fnb is, eBucks! i think i’m going to be accumulating so much of it which is going to be awesome!

anyhoo, i don’t think i ever wanna go through opening another account at any bank. 3 hours is a tad much if you don’t get told or know what exactly you have to take with you!

so that’s one resolution down! yay me!