ABSA - Worst bank in South Africa?

I would give minus stars if I could. I have THREE existing products with ABSA: a home loan, vehicle asset finance, and a life insurance policy. In order to access the home loan, I need to open a cheque account with them. What an absolute mission.

I app**** online on 19th June, and uploaded a copy of my ID and lease agreement. Then I was told they wanted a copy of the lease agreement dated 2018, which I don't have. So I supp**** the SAME documents that were supp**** when the bond was registered. Nope, not good enough. So I supp**** copies of THEIR OWN STATEMENTS for my home loan which have my physical address on. Nope, they can't possibly accept their own bank records - why? Because God forbid maybe they got it wrong 3 months ago when they registered the bond?? So I arranged with my landlady to provide an updated lease agreement. I submitted it online and voila! Accepted! Or so I thought. I was specifically informed by the consultant who phoned me on 27th June (yes, it's taken over a week) that the account was for all intents and purposes, open, and all I had to do was take in my ID, the lease agreement, and R59 to the branch to collect the card, and activate the account.

Apparently, I was "misinformed". The Customer "DIS"Service representative would not accept the lease agreement because '2016' had been crossed out on the signature page and '2018' handwritten next to it - albeit counter-signed by both signatories.

I saw a newspaper headline this week that read "Brain Drain from Barclays Africa" - well, that's been made VERY clear to me this week! If I didn't need this account to access my bond, I would have stopped bothering about 6 days ago, after the first lease agreement was rejected. C'mon. I know that there are laws in place but surely there must be room for some reason? Or has "reason" and "logic" left Barclays Africa along with the brains?