Password protest blocked

A customer who had a barney with his bank changed his account password to “Lloyds is Pants” — only for them to switch it to "No We Are Not”.

Steve Jetley, 52, used the cheeky keyword for phone and online banking for two years.

But now he is having another set-to with Lloyds TSB after discovering staff had changed it without his permission. He said: “It was half joke, half protest and Lloyds staff usually burst out laughing when I used it.”



But Steve — a customer for 20 years — was fuming when he called the Lloyds TSB business centre in Birmingham and discovered it had been changed. He demanded it be re-set to “Lloyds is Rubbish”. When told that was inappropriate, he tried “Barclays is Better”. After another rejection, he went for “Censorship” but was told it could only be six letters.

When he finally suggested “Faeces” he was informed new rules meant the characters had to be numbers, not letters.

Yesterday Lloyds confirmed a staff member broke banking rules by changing a customer’s password without consent. They said the employee no longer worked at the centre but would not say if she had been fired.