Absa Bank makes it impossible for me to close a credit card which I'm not using.

I have been trying to close my Absa Card for the past year and it is impossible. Absa's call centre is terrifyingly bad. I just tried to speak to an agent again for five times with the following results: - It takes about two to three minutes to navigate the menus to get to where you want to be. - On the first call when I finally reached the agent section the call disconnected immediately. - On the second call the call disconnected again when I reached the agent. - On the third call I did reach an agent and she asked me the normal verification questions. As I was busy looking getting answers to the information she got impatient and dropped the phone in my ear. It did not take me thirty seconds to get the answer to her questions. - On the fourth call the call disconnected again. - On the fifth call it seemed that the system auto-routed me to the wrong department. - I was unable to close my account.

This is the fourth time that I am trying to close my credit card. Previous times Absa would just say that they cannot close the card as I have a small fee (the monthly fee) outstanding on the card. When I pay that amount then there is again another fee which results in them not closing it. The last time someone said that they will close it after I pay the small fee. They never did. This does not make sense as they deduct the small fee from my checking account every month - it just seems that this is a nefarious strategy to force me to keep my account open.

I have now again been trying to reach someone for the past 90 minutes.

I am an executive and live in the US - our South African head office banks with Absa and honestly if this is the way Absa treats their customers I will close all accounts with them. Someone should listen in on the call centre - I bet no-one is doing any form of customer experience / call quality checks there.