I recently received a phone call: "This is your internet bank--have you got time for a chat?" Well, why not? It was a slow night.

"Before we go on, I must just ask you some security details," the caller said. "Hang on," I said. "You rang me. Maybe I should check your identity. What's my account number?" He couldn't tell me--not unless I gave him my security code and mother's maiden name.

I rang the bank the next day. "I think you should know that someone is pretending to be you and ringing me up as king for my security code," I said. He had to tell me that it really had been the bank. "We don't have much contact with our customers," he said, "what with being an internet bank--so we thought we'd ring and say hello and let you know that we're real people." Yet I had opened an account there precisely to avoid talking to real people.

The bank was considering other means of making customers feel wanted, he told me. Maybe I wouldn't get phoned in future--the bank would come to my house instead to deliver a special password so that when someone rang, they could quote it and I would know they were genuine. "It would be a silly word," he said, "like hedgehog." At least it wasn't "banana", the most common password people choose for internet banking. (If you actually have "banana" as your password, I suggest you change it--now.)

Then there was the occasion I tried to get the bank to deliver a new card. "Can you deliver it in the evening?" I asked. "No, only during office hours," a man said. He seemed surprised to discover that during office hours, I tend to be in my office. The system works like this: the courier company delivers the card to an empty address, finds no one in and leaves a number to call. You ring the number to find the card has been destroyed, for security reasons. "Can you arrange for a new one to be delivered to my office, please?" I said. "No, we only deliver to your home."

But perhaps the internet bank is better than the high street bank whose account I tried to close. I was not allowed to close it because I couldn't remember the password I had set up when I opened the account aged 12. I tried "banana". And "hedgehog". It was neither. So I withdrew all the money except for 2p. Each time I am sent a statement, it will cost the bank ten times that for postage. If everyone does the same, it'll bankrupt them eventually.

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group