Recently the Ombudsman for Banking Services embarked on a national road show to increase awareness of the role and function of the office.

With this we conducted a competition/survey requesting comment on which bank consumers felt was the best in terms of dispute resolution and service delivery, entrants where further asked, WHY? (…is X your bank of choice) and to provide TIPS for the banks? (What would you like to see banks change or do differently)

Our five winners provided the following valuable tips:

Darryl Hartzenburg (entered the competition at the Argus Cycle Tour) "Listen to customers! With the excellent service I get, and the fact that I feel attended to by my bank. I feel no need to change. In the past my previous bank dictated to me. They did not listen."

A. van Niekerk "Bank charges are too high. More tellers, less queues!"

David Saili "Talk to clients more! Introduce some kind of rewards for individual accounts that are very active, they will become word of mouth adverts for you. Set very high standards that others can / will find difficult to copy, like [during] month end open the bank at 08h00"

Mrs. M. Seqhobane (entered at Rand Easter Show) "Have sufficient staff…have people's interests at heart…"

Mrs. Rookmoney Ramdhani (entered in La Lucia or Gateway) "More Service!... When banks are very busy more tellers should help."

Each of our winners walked away with R2000.00!