Hi Esbe All the advice of talking to Standardbank (which was given to me as well) did not really help unfortunately, for I tried that. All the employees in the bank, including that of Home Affairs are tied to the application's business processes which means they cannot help you for you are within the electronic process and no one can change that for they do not know of your application or payment etc until you get the tickboxes ticked and the appointment finalised. In my case I phoned Home Affairs from StandardBank in Canal walk and I must admit it took a while before anyone answered the phone, but I got through and the person confirmed that they had problems on Home Affairs site. My comment was - Why not post an ALERT that the site is not operational and so many things they can put in place to ease frustration. I also made the payment, but waited a few days when Home affairs came back online to receive those ticks. The fact that one paid but got no feedback in my case, means NO GREEN ticks and hence no appointment and NO SERVICE, but queued. After I waited for Home Affairs to come back online, the process then went through quite smoothly and I got my ticks, made the appointment online and I really enjoyed the comfort of being attended to in a very professional manner. However that is my take on this that STandardbank was not to blame in my instance, although they could also not help for they are unable to assist with a process on hold. That is the frustrating part of it. On the whole it is still better to wait on Home Affairs site to become operational again, than queueing on a smelly pavement for hours on end with no toilet facilities, with nobody informing you on the status of service and the risk of your car's wipers being stolen or just broken into whilst in the queue to nowhere.
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