Prematurely blocks/cancels bank cards

My bank cards are expiring at the end of Aug 2022. I called Standard Bank on Saturday the 16th of July 2022 to change the branch from where I need to collect my cards. This turned into a disaster.

My cards now shows expired at all the merchant I tried to transact with. I cannot withdraw money and the bank claims there is something wrong with my cards. The issue is incompetence from the bank. Before I called them there was nothing wrong with my cards. Now I am stuck without access to my funds.

My guess is that they made the cards invalid because of the new cards that are on the way. Speaking to one of the consultants and asking them to transfer me to a team leader turned out to be fruitless. The consultants claims his team leader was unavailable but I think otherwise...

Poor service to say the least