This morning, I had a grrrrr….uelling experience with my bank.

I don’t log on to online banking much any more, as I’m not very active financially. After the stroke, I shut a lot of things down, a morbid obsession with leaving things as easy as possible for my wife to sort out, so there are very few transactions.

However, in late September, we had a water bill drop through the door, so I figured it was about time to part with the cash.

So I logged on to my online bank. “We have changed our system. Please enter new credentials.” Oh, great. So I played along and created new credentials, then tried to log in again.

No dice. I must have entered the credentials wrongly. Forgotten password link – it wanted my Customer Number. What the f*** is my Customer Number? I’ve had the account twenty years and never needed it before!

So, at 8:30am I am on the phone to them. A nice “good morning” message for the guy on the helpdesk.

I recount my problems. “Not to worry, sir. Let’s see how we can help”. So, we walk through the setup process once again. Over the phone, I get a key piece of information. My choice for such-and-such a passcode cannot be the same as it was previously. Really? That’s not stated on the web site. Well, it should be OK to re-use the old passcode, but we’ve had some customers who’ve had problems. Too bloody right!

Ten minutes later, and I’m looking at my account. I suppose the good thing is that there was more money in it than I expected! It turns out that my re-use of that code had been the problem. I used a different code, and sailed through. I’ve had this account for many years, and my code was imprinted on my brain. But, ask me to remember a different one???

Once inside their application, you can imagine my first task – put the bloody code back to what it was originally! Changing for changing’s sake is no guarantee of security, plus I’m confident that my code number was secure – at least as secure as it was the last time I logged on. Do they really think they’ve built a safer system, when all they’ve done is force me to write codes down?

But before I quit their application, I remembered to do one more thing…pay the damn bill!