Standard Bank Bureaucracy is ****ing my bussiness

This Saturday 07/07/2018, I went to the bank to open my Credit Card account (Blue Route, Tokai), Faizil van Voord was a very pleasant consultant and seems to be on top of the situation. After consulting with him he required further documentation to my affordability, which I told him I will gladly email him as soon as my accountant send me the letter and payslip. No problem so I send this information off yesterday (10/07/2018).

He also gave me his business card, which is good, so that on any follow up I can give him a call. I tried doing that this morning, I realised that it is the general call centre number, so the point of the business card is useless, because I cannot contact the consultant directly for one, but hey lets try. I have been on the line for 20 minutes now, until after the second try I got cut off.

Now to make this silly argument I would have probably be better off driving to Tokai blue route to get feedback on my application, with the amount of time I was waiting on the phone, I should technically send a Standard bank my bill for the phone call.

This is not my first run in on the absolute useless system. I cannot contact the branch directly to check on progress. A 30 second call changed into 20 minutes hanging on and after the tele -consultants second attempt I got cut off, just to get through to the branch.

Why is there no direct line anymore??? Does not make sense. Do we not trust the branches anymore. Is this centralised system cheaper to run ? I must say I have been banking with Standard Bank for a very long time, I think my dad still helped me open my account.

It gets more difficult to get the human help, if it was not for the app I would not have been able to do the most basic function. But as soon as the human factor is needed the system has made it impossible to get through to somebody. What now, must I actually now drive to the bank, which should have taken a simple follow up phone call. Maybe the system is convenient for Standard Bank, but not for me as a client, each year the system gets worse. Most of my banking does not fall within the standard framework. I need competent systems that can help me.

My question, is this why Standard Bank changed they slogan from, "Simpler, Better, Faster" to "Moving Forward", so that they actually cannot be sued for false advertising?

Now I have a problem, I need things to move forward, but I cannot contact the basic person which could immediately solve my problem. For a 30 second follow up, now turned into 1 wasted hour, including me typing this.

I probably have to take leave to go to the bank, or wait for the weekend to get a different consultant to start this process again, because of the changes of getting the same consultant is impossible. So the service I receiving is a combination of the Post Office for speed and cost, and Telkom for customer service. Yeah..."Moving Forward", whereto? is my question.