Standard Bank's decline

Standard Bank’s decline On 11 July 2022 at 09:04, I visited the Standard Bank branch in the Garden Centre in Cape Town. The purpose was to have my Debit card reset that wouldn’t work on the previous day at Woolworths. I waited for about twenty minutes, and then a certain Justin Crowie motioned me towards his cubicle. I explained the situation and he asked if I had the Standard Bank online banking application on my phone. I confirmed this but said to have access to it would require that I connect to the bank’s Wi-Fi network as I only had airtime on the phone and no data. So, to connect to their network, we had to get an OTP sent to the phone. It wouldn’t work and Justin Crowie became impatient. He asked whether there was a problem with my ISP? I answered no, and wondered that, since we were trying to connect to Standard Bank’s Wi-Fi network, what role does the ISP play in the process? From there onwards, he tried again to send the OTP and asked me several questions. Each of my answers was met with a snarky comment. At first, I couldn’t believe that this was happening. It reminded me of the attitude of a government employee, not that of a worker in a private company, and a bank to boot. Rude, abrupt government employees regularly try to make a fool out of the citizens. But how could a bank employee of one of the major South African banking groups behave like this? Yet, he persisted. Then he tried another process, which had me sitting there for about twenty minutes, seemingly because their IT system was extremely slow. I was reminded that in recent news in the media it was reported that Standard Bank’s IT system was experiencing several problems of late and that senior personnel changes have been made to improve it. Eventually, the card was reset. Looking back at this extremely unpleasant experience, I get the impression that he did not understand the system and processes. Furthermore, it is clear that this person should not be in direct contact with the public. Such rude behaviour has no place in any business, let alone the banking environment, which used to be the bastion of professionality. But things have changed, that much is evident. A brochure on his desk held a message that after the service was rendered, a SMS would be sent to me to evaluate the service. This message only arrived two days later. Out of a score of 10, I gave it a O. So, do people hide their own incompetence behind arrogant behaviour? Perhaps he should be sent to something akin to anger management classes, or patience development classes? I am now considering migrating all my accounts to another bank, either First Rand or Capitec.