ABSA CALL CENTRE DANGEROUS TO CUSTOMERS MENTAL HEALTH

I think Hello Peter should be renamed Goodbye ABSA. Yet again I have to complain about the dreadful service from ABSA call center. 15.26 minutes waiting for a simple piece of information about their online banking. I need to order a new debit - my current one is expiring and, unlike a "normal" bank, they do not contact you and ask where you want your new card delivered - that would be far too customer friendly. Instead the customer has to order the replacement card online. All goes well until one field that says "Specify your preferred branch". Whatever wording I used, the field returns to a blank one still asking the same question. So, thinking I must be entering the branch incorrectly, I grit my teeth and phoned the "Help" line and pressed the 25 buttons it takes to manage to speak to a human. Always a horrific experience, this time the agent could not help me when I asked what I should put as my "preferred branch", despite me saying Strand, and she kept asking me if it was in a shopping center. When I asked her to give me the name of ANY branch in Strand, Western Cape, so that I could complete the blasted form, she told me I had to wait 4 minutes as she did not have a list of branches to hand and I did not know if it was in a shopping center and the name of the shopping center. I asked to speak to her supervisor as the conversation about shopping centers was getting increasingly bizarre. Gave up after holding for the supervisor for 10 more minutes. Standard Bank here we come.