When banks fail to flag unusual account activity, refuse refunds, and leave customers without answers — what next?

The pattern keeps repeating in the reports reaching our desk. Money leaves an account in transactions the customer says they never made — often in amounts, times or locations far outside anything on the account’s history. The bank’s systems, which are supposed to flag exactly this kind of unusual activity, let it through. And when the customer turns to the bank for answers, the door stays shut: the refund is refused, the dispute is closed without explanation, and months of queries are met with silence or a one-line acknowledgement.

South Africa’s banks are required to monitor accounts and detect unusual activity. When a customer disputes a transaction, there are rules about how that dispute must be handled and how long a response may take. None of that helps if the process is used to wear people down — refused on the strength of a form letter, closed before the customer has said a word, or left open indefinitely until they simply give up.

So we’re asking the questions the customers say they can’t get answered: What does a bank actually do when a disputed transaction lands on its desk? Who decides, and on what documents? And when a refund is refused, what does the bank have to show for that refusal?

This is not a one-week story. We will follow the process as it happens — the complaints, the escalations, the right of reply, the ombud where it goes that far — and we will report each step as it comes, so you can see exactly how far a case has to travel and where it gets stuck.

If your bank failed to flag unusual activity on your account, refused to refund transactions you dispute, or left you without answers, we want to hear from you. Send us:

• the bank and the period over which this happened,
• the disputed transactions and the amounts,
• what the bank told you — in writing where you have it,
• and any statements, reference numbers or correspondence on file.

We will treat your information carefully and won’t publish your details without consent.

Individually, these disputes are easy to dismiss as the cost of banking. Together, they become a pattern — and patterns are evidence.