Not sure how you ended up with a bank that has a local branch unless you either moved or it's a joint account (and the other party lives near one).
If it's the latter, perhaps you could have them go in, if the former perhaps you should switch banks depending on how difficult it is to do business with a bank so far away. With a local branch, are we talking another town (30 minutes drive away, hours drive away) or are we talking out of state? I know when I moved out here, I closed the account at my former place of residence (2,300 miles away) and opened another account out here once moved...
Another option might be to contact the better business bureau.
http://www.bbb.org/
If the person on the phone refuses to deal with you, a nice letter from the BBB with indication that failure to respond could result in negative marks being listed against them by the BBB (aka, negative PR that anyone or everyone could view before deciding whether to do business with them) might get a responce.
I had a problem several years back with CompuServe (incidently after it was bought out by AO-Hell). OK, some back story:
I had a CompuServe account since about 1995. This was back on classic, long before the merger with AO-Hell, and towards the "good ol days" of the Internet, aka the WWW was just new, before broadband was common, etc...
After I moved out here and began college, I just kept the account at that point though I lived on campus and the following spring semester (1998) had just got hooked up for resnet connection (aka ethernet access from the college dorms).
Sometime after this, there was announcement that AO-Hell bought them out, though "we don't plan on messing up the service, and will keep all the servers and everything seperate, yadda, yadda, yadda". Despite indication however, indication was online that they started to merge the support depts, those who answered the phones, etc So one month, they went to double bill me. Well, I had the money to cover my bill once in checking, but not twice. So they took the money the first time, tried to take it a second time (bank declined transaction). Then afterwards they refunded the first transaction back to the check card. They suspended service, I called... In fact, everything that happened to me, to the tee sounded like what AO-Hell customers were complaining about for years. I never signed up with their crappy service, but got thrown in it through "corporate merger".
They're menu system made it impossible to reach anyone (the peeps in the right department, the phones would just ring and ring, but no one picked up ever, anytime of day). Tried to get around this, the run around, etc. As to the bill, when I finally did get someone who would talk:
them: Yes, we did get payment, but when our system billed you again it couldn't get paid.
me: That's not my problem. You did get paid. I'm not obligated to pay my bill twice, only once. Your double billing problem is your responsibility. Payment was already made.
them: But we refunded that.
on and on... It got nowhere. I contacted the BBB and reported this. A few months latter I got notice back from the BBB that several attempts to contact CSi went unanswered and they were being put on record as a company that fails to respond to attempts at contact to discuss certain problems.
Mysteriously, (or perhaps not so mysteriously) after this letter was sent out, about 2-3 weeks later indication was given that CSi decided to contact them...and what they said was the same old song and dance, PR song sheet...that went to justify the whole ordeal. They did try to as silently as possible reverse the account suspension for having not received double payment however, but only after I got the BBB involved, even as they tried to avoid speaking to them.
Perhaps the better business bureau might be an option if all else fails. Perhaps someone who is positioned above that phone jokey might also notice the complaint and be more willing to help then them... In any case, the BBB no doubt has experience getting after companies when the need arises.