Branch consolidation gone too far?

I live in Tableview and the Table Bay Standard Bank branch was recently closed, making Bayside the only Standard Bank branch in quite a large area. Table Bay was always busy/understaffed. My usual trick was to put my name down at the branch, go do the grocery shopping and by the time I was back I would be served.

I recently had to do a simple forex deposit... it ended up taking four trips to Bayside to do so. The first time I went on Saturday and the FX teller was not in, no problem.

I went back on Tuesday around 2pm and there was a massive slow queue at the tellers. Not all of the tellers were open and this would have taken hours, so I decided to rather go back the next morning when the branch opened.

Doing so, I was third in line on Wednesday morning. Initially there was only one teller open, doing FX, deposits etc. Later one more teller opened, but you have to wait for the FX teller if you're doing foreign exchange and that teller serves non-FX customers as well. It took over 90 minutes for me to be helped, with the first people in the queue having been handed off to the second teller, and the second people having "a simple" transaction to do. I had a meeting at 11am which I thought I'd easily be back in time for, having been at the bank since before 9am c'est la vie. Unfortunately the teller was unable to help me as I did not have my new ID card on me (only drivers license) and Standard Bank had my old ID on the system. Apparently nothing can be done in such scenario? So that was the end of that trip. There was a massive queue when I left.

So Thursday morning I'm at the bank at 8:30 (the bank opens at 9), fourth time and fourth in line, but thankfully first for the tellers. This time the transaction gets done, hallelujah! It takes half an hour however, the address Standard Bank had captured previously did not state the city in both places, so this had to be rectified: print, sign, scan etc. When I left there is an even larger queue, everyone waiting for the one teller that does FX transactions. I'm honestly not sure everyone there at 9:30 would be helped that day.

So my question is, has the branch consolidation, retrenchments and cost cutting gone to far? Standard Bank's financial results have been great, but is this at the expense of the customer experience? Is one branch enough to serve the huge and growing Tableview area? Other banks seem to think not. And if there is only one branch for the area, how can you get away with so few tellers being open, especially during a busy time of the year? And only one that deals with FX along with other transactions? What about a consultant checking with the people in the queue that they have everything which is needed for the transaction to not waste their time?

We have seven personal and business accounts with Standard Bank, and its generally ok. Online banking goes down more often than the other banks, and there's the odd issue with cards, but actually having to do something at a branch is comparable to going to a government department. Hands done the Cape Town municipality office is miles more efficient, helpful and a pleasure to use compared to Standard Bank. Is this good enough Standard Bank? We also have an account with Investec and that's also a pleasure to deal with. At some point we'll have to consider moving our accounts if service levels continue to degrade.