Unreliable and Unprofessional

I submitted my VAT refund application to the VRA in January 2024 and I was told that they take a month to do what they do before sending in the application to SARS. The VRA website claims that they are "dedicated to verifying that all the necessary conditions are met and guiding you through the VAT refund process" (hence the month of internal processing I would assume). Naturally I assumed that when they accepted my submission with no query then all necessary conditions had been met. I waited patiently until the 3 months that they promised the whole process would take was up, then I started following up. A dozen follow up phone calls, a few ignored emails and 6 months later, they tell me that my application had been declined because I submitted a copy instead of the original invoice. Something a quick check on their side by the team that is "dedicated to verifying that all the necessary conditions are met" would have picked up. What buffles me is why it took 9 months for them to tell me that my application could not go through because there was a copy instead of an original document. It sounds to me like they either had no idea what was going on with my application, had lost the application or something more sinister is going on over there. Would give them less than one star if it were possible.