Obstructive service agents and extremely poor service

<p>We had a complaint regarding a Standard Bank financial advisor we recently dealt with. I called the customer helpline and asked customer service representative to give me the contact phone number or email address of the manager this individual reported to so that we could lodge a direct complaint with them. When we asked who we should contact - the service consultant said they were not allowed to divulge staff details. To circumvent this privacy issue I then asked them to provide a general email address that would go to a central desk at the investment division in Cape Town – i.e. non person specific. Again I was met with a direct refusal to provide this information. They were also quite rude and abrupt in the process.</p> <p>Given that we have no further interest in dealing with this *********** member of their investment staff - we stated we needed to speak directly to the department head since our complaint was of a serious and private investment nature. I then asked them to please get a senior manager in the investment division in Cape Town to call us. The service consultant ignored my request and said they would contact the investment consultant directly.</p> <p>Their dismissive, rude and obstructive attitude was frankly unacceptable. And whilst on the surface this may appear to be a problem with one SB service consultant (a single ‘bad apple’) - this member of staff was clearly acting under a very specific service instruction set. It appears that Standard Bank currently have a siege mentality and have adopted a corporate attitude that everyone outside their hallowed halls are to be treated as the 'enemy'.</p> <p>We can only suggest to anyone even vaguely considering moving to this officious, arrogant, *********** bank that they go elsewhere. Apart from the above issue - Standard Bank's online banking service is without doubt one of the worst in SA - extremely unreliable and almost impossible to get hold of when you experience an inevitable problem.</p> <p>We have been SB customers for over 30 years and have a very good standing with the bank from a credit worthiness point of view. Despite the good relationship we have enjoyed with our local branch we have no alternative now but to fire Standard Bank and move all our accounts and investments to an alternative bank. Based on the degree of negative feedback on this site it seems we aren’t alone!</p>