Misinformed Laybye Terms and Conditions

Goodday,

I hope you can help me. My family and I placed a laybye a long while back and was reassured at both your Tokai and Ottery stores that our laybye never expires. Well yesterday on wanting to finish the laybye my husband was told that they cannot find our laybye and that must mean it expired. The lady who helped him was very unhelpful and not customer friendly. Unfortunately we were not able to finish our laybye sooner as my husband is currently unemployed. Please advise on way forward. If I have correct we were R100 short of paying our full laybye - to loose nearly R3000 due to being misinformed?

Be blessed!