Man’s ‘pants’ password is changed

The bank apologised to Mr Jetley in a statement

A man who chose “Lloyds is pants” as
his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a
member of staff to “no it’s not”.

Steve Jetley, from Shrewsbury, said he chose the password after
falling out with Lloyds TSB over insurance that came free with an
account.

He said he was then banned from changing it back or to another password of “Barclays is better”.

The bank apologized and said the staff member no longer worked there.

Mr Jetley said he first realized his security
password had been changed when a call centre staff member told him his
code word did not match with the one on the computer.

“I thought it was actually quite a funny response,” he said.

I tried ‘Barclays is better’ and that didn’t go down too well either Steve Jetley

“But what really incensed me was when I was told I could not change
it back to ‘Lloyds is pants’ because they said it was not appropriate.

“I asked if it was ‘pants’ they didn’t like, and would ‘Lloyds is rubbish’ do? But they didn’t think so.

“So I tried ‘Barclays is better’ and that didn’t go down too well either.

“The rules seemed to change, and they told me it had to be one
word, so I tried ‘censorship’, but they didn’t like that, and then said
it had to be no more than six letters long.”

‘Very disappointing’

Mr Jetley said he was still trying to find a suitable password which met the conditions.

He said his dispute with the bank started over some travel
insurance, but that issue had been dealt with by managers
independently.

A statement released by the bank said: “We would like to apologise to Mr Jetley.

“It is very disappointing that he felt the need to express his
upset with our service in this way. Customers can have any password
they choose and it is not our policy to allow staff to change the
password without the customer’s permission.

“The member of staff involved no longer works for Lloyds TSB.”

Lloyds TSB stressed there was no security lapse in this case.

A spokesperson said: “On the majority of transactions advisors cannot read customers’ passwords.

“In this case it was a business banking customer using a system
where more than one person from a business can check their balance.

“In these cases an advisor can read the full password.

“But if such customers require more complex transactions, then
full security procedures apply and advisors cannot read secure
information.”