Stupidity> Citibank and me, a farce in infinite parts

Citibank UK has now screwed me over for the last time. Trying to use the ATM two days back, I found that my card had been blocked. Fair enough, I'd been pulling out large amounts in order to pay for a motorcycle, in cash. I called them from Australia, on a UK number, and after a long wait got connected to their call centre in Bombay. I described my problem to the business-process-outsourcing person on a cheap headset on the other end, gave them a total of 9 security checks, described my problem again, got put on hold and was finally informed that everything had been taken care of.

"That's it, Mr. Jarvenpaa. We have now cancelled your card and will send a replacement to your mailing address within 5 business days."

"You did WHAT?"

"I cancelled your card. You told me it was captured by the ATM, right?"

At this point I started alternately screaming at the poor BPO person on the other end, and laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I only needed them to remove the ATM block from the card, not cancel the damn thing, which she could no longer undo. And of course, I'm in Australia, sending it to my UK address which gets redirected to my dad in Finland would be of little use.

After more screaming and being on hold, I was informed that they could courier the card to the closest branch, which is in Sydney. That's over a 1,000 km from where I am now, thanks very much. The call cost me $65 US.

The idiots also cancelled my online banking access, since everything with the shit bank is tied together and can't be unravelled without disrupting the entire system of Excel sheets on someone's old Pentium where they try to keep a tally of everyone's account balances. I called about this and went through another security-check hell, twice, since the first person was only able to give me details about their fax number, and the second person was able to give me details about my account. In the end, the only thing they could do for me was tell me to send a fax with all the details I had just given them. This call inly cost me $51 US since I didn't scream to them as much. I need to stop using this horrible bank as soon as possible.

Uh... just when I was about to post this, another pattern emerged. I had previously received two voicemails prompting me to call the bank, and just got a call in the same vein. The messages were crackly, but I distinctly heard it was not my name the person mumbled out. Now that I got the call, it was clear that they were looking for someone called Malone, Ely or Ellie or something like that.

What the hell is going on with my account details? Why would they confuse the phone numbers and names? I have no way to check what's going on, given the blocks in place, and I'm on the other side of the world from the branch these idiots are courteously telling me to visit.