Closing a credit card account is really easy right?

I've paid off my Santander credit card. I borrowed money from my parents to do it and can pay them back more than they get from an ISA and I pay less interest than a credit card. Part of the reason that I chose to kill this one off was that they put up my interest rate on the card from 18% to 24% just like that (I did have 30 days to pay off the balance of £1,500 though!). I was told this was because of my usage pattern (in other words I was not spending on it so they weren't getting much interest). Even though I spent on it until I got the money to pay it off, I got another letter saying it was going up again. Although the base rate is what 2%? They can get away with upping my rate to 25% just by giving me notice as if I can just pay off the balance if I am unhappy! Pretty outrageous. This at a time when an ISA might give you 4% interest.
Anyway, I rang to close the account and it took a total of about 10 minutes on the phone to get through the rubbish "press 1 for..." menus and then talk to 2 people to close the account. The thing that got me most was after saying I wanted it closed, I was asked if I could hold while it was closed. I asked why, couldn't they just close it for me and I could hang up? Apparently not. I was then on hold for about a minute before being told it had closed. We have computers nowadays, they are supposed to make things quick and easy. Closing an account should be "Does the person owe any more money? No -> Close account" and the computer should do this pretty much instantly. For some completely ironic reason, I could have gone to a branch from home and had a person close the account in less time than it took on the phone (except I probably wouldn't be allowed to close it at a bank or otherwise wait in an incompetent queue).
This country does make me despair when the solutions to these issues are so simple, there are too many incompetent people in management now we have the "too many chiefs model of management" in this country.