Hello - can you hear me?

I have a Royal Bank credit card. The balance on it this month is £2. I'll repeat that, for the sake of all those working stiffs out there who wonder if they will ever be free of credit card debt: £2. It can be done. You just have to wait till retirement. O wait, most of you still working will never get to retirement...In fact, the balance would be zero but the b******s at Lovefilm/Amazon took money off me after I had cancelled my membership. I've written to RBS twice already telling them of my change of address but as usual customer 'service' has failed to operate, so today I phoned. This is why I hate call centres.

I went through the usual stuff: card number followed by the security question: second letter of my mother's maiden name. I can't remember if I spelled her name McDonald or MacDonald. But I got away with it this time. Then I was asked for the expiry date on the card. Problem: I'm upstairs with the statement and the card is downstairs. I decide to hang on in hopes that I'll be switched through to an operator. It works. We start again: I explain I only want to change the address on my statement but we start all over: name, first line of my address, nope that's not the address we have here, that's why I'm phoning. Let me ask you a couple of security questions: card number, expiry date, 3 letter code on the back, and do I know the balance on the card? Nope, I know nothing after the card number but if you insist I'll take the phone downstairs and get the card out of my bag. On my way downstairs, I ask: why on earth do you need to know all this? Security, he says. You ask 6 questions for security? 6? Really? Why? But he can't tell me. He only works here.

I shouldn't be surprised - any more than I was surprised to hear earlier today that my call to Santander was to be charged at 10p a minute. The announcement by Santander telling me this probably takes about 3 minutes. Nice profit, guys. This morning I wanted to change the payment date on a car from the 1st to the 16th of the month. To do that I had to have: the agreement number, the make and model and registration number of the car. And can I tell the nice lady at Santander how much this car costs every month? And also how it is paid? I ask why on earth they need to know all this. Security.

Somebody is having a laugh here. If I agree a code word with the RBS credit card centre and answer correctly, there is absolutely no reason for all these extra questions. If I have the agreement number and details of the car I'm phoning about - likewise. So what is this about? It can't just be about making money from phone calls - and it's definitely not about security.

Maybe it's just about p***ing customers off.