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I never usually bother with my barclaycard, but it’s a cashback one so I thought I might as well start using it, made a few purchases this month and got home to find an answerphone message asking me to call their automated fraud detection system.

So I ring it up (0845 naturally not 0800) and hear some shitty computer try to pronounce the names of a couple of retailers which I c ant understand so I have it play them again, nope still don’t get it so I take the plunge and push number 2 to speak to someone…. oh f*ck… what a mistake that was.

Up pops an Indian accent reading out something robot sounding like she read it a million times before, slowing pumping it out one more time. She asks me verification questions (I have been on the phone for 6 minutes before even talking to her).

Question #1, “You made a purchase at a duty free shop, can you remember the name of the shop?”.

Yepp thats it, not when or anything and who the f*ck remembers the name of some generic duty free shop in a foreign airport anyway, so I ask her when, she tells the month and I say well f*ck I don’t remember – the bulgaria duty free shop. Surprise surprise this is not a good enough answer for our outsourced robot. So we try again with another question.

Question #2, “You made an electronic purchase, can you tell me the name of the retailer”

Again, that’s seriously word for word what I was asked to confirm my identity, now I have made one or two electronic purchases in my life, oh at least several hundred – so I told her thats f*ckin’ rediculous and just shouted AMAZON at her, again of the hundreds if not thousands of possible “right” answers this one was just not good enough for her. So I said when was it, she kindly told me this was done in May,  5 months ago. I re-affirmed the stupidity of all this and she asked if I had a statement, I said no and didn’t want to go turn on my PC find out the super complicated login details and find out this ridiculous piece of information to prove that I am me. She wouldn’t let it go so I said OK while I go through this circus you go get me your supervisor.

5 minutes later shes back, no supervisor but someone has authorised her to ask me two more “security questions”, these are as follows

Question #3 “There is another card holder on your account, can you tell me their name please?”

OK now this will only be my wife so I say her name, I must now answer the next critical question.

Question #4 “Can you confirm with me your address”

Now I go to this place every day so I’m pretty f*ckin sure I can nail this one too. Let’s see if our robot is at last happy I am who I claim to be.

“I’m sorry but the answer to one of the questions is wrong”

Yes, I am now utterly livid – this simple little exercise that should have been sorted within the first couple of minutes by the automated system has now gone on for 24 minutes and my just arrived home from work calmness has turned into call centre rage so I chase her up on her lazy supervisor, she says “I’m going to have to put you on hold” I tell her you already did that so go on do it again – there’s no mistaking my anger at this point.

After 6 minutes along comes the supervisor who I explain the ridiculous situation to and insist that I know the name of my own wife and where I live, he then asks me for letters bla bla and bla of my password (why the f*ck this wasnt asked for in the first place I will never know) and finally I AM ME!, so lets make some progress now with him.

We roll through the 5 items, 1 matches OK, 2 is for some flight tickets I spent around £200 on, and now my computer is on I can see exactly what I have been charged for this on my barclaycard online statement (which for some reason only go back for the last 3 months), however he is telling me they cost £131 – I tell him to explain to me the difference between their two systems – he can’t.

The third item is OK, then 4 and 5 are a small amount for a toy I ordered from Tesco, and another charge from Tesco that he says is a sort of tester payment that retailers do that does not appear on customer statements so you effectively are never aware they exist – yet I am to use this fact as further defense against the evils of fraud.

So to summarise Barclays strategy against banking fraud.

1) You must know the names of all the retailers you have ever made an electronic purchase with (if that includes P.O.S PIN purchases in a physical shop then thats even harder, it’s already impossible)

2) When you are exhausted at the crack of dawn travelling across the world, remember to make a note of every shop you purchase from on your journey with a Barclaycard

3) Even if you know the name of the love of your life who you have known for over half a decade, and the address of where you have lived for almost as long – you are probably wrong

4) What you see on your barclays screen, can be very different to what they have on their screen – there is no explanation for this, but errrmmm… well whatever.

5) Transactions you are never aware of, are used to confirm their authenticity with you.

What a frustrating way to throw half an hour down the toilet, I asked his name, her name and the address to complain to – I got the names and he said he would have to transfer me to customer services to get the address – I told him he was f*ckin mad, he offered to log a formal complaint for me for which I can expect another robot with a different script to call me within 48 hours to waste some more time talking random sh*t about how to run a bank.

Barclays… I HATE Barclays, cashback or no cashback.