Although some may disagree with this statement, I consider myself quite a mild-mannered, easy-going soul on the whole. Until someone gets my goat and then I am like a rottweiler (if you’ll pardon my mixed metaphors).

You may remember me telling the story of how one day, completely unsolicited, I received a credit card from ‘You First’, a brand name of Lloyds TSB a few months back, without a ‘by your leave’ from me. Well, I said at the time ‘me last actually’, after just about anyone within their business who thinks that Lloyds TSB can make money from me.

I did what I said I would do on that occasion and posted a print-out of that day’s posting to them along with my cut up card, that I never asked for and never wanted.

A surprising chain of events happened after that. A couple of days later, I got a pile of cheques, which I (generously) gave them the benefit of the doubt about and assumed they had crossed in the post with my letter so I simply shredded them. Then I got a letter from a member of staff saying that they’d received my credit card, cut up and they had no idea why and would I please get in touch to explain myself. Of course I did what anyone sensible would have done at this juncture - nothing. I decided that if they couldn't either read or coordinate between their departments that was their tough luck and they could waste time and effort writing to me but I was not going to bother wasting my own time to respond as I felt I'd already comprehensively covered my reasons for the cut up card.

A couple of days later, I got another letter saying ‘I wrote to you to say we’d be looking into your complaints a few days ago and that’s what I’m doing now. In the meantime, here is a leaflet telling you how you should complain’. Read the subtext there ‘you naughty girl, slagging us off online – we’d much rather you’d sent us a private letter so no one else had to know what we’ve done’. By the way – I never received the so-called earlier letter.

A couple of weeks later, I got a letter that sort of explained a few things at least – it seemed that Lloyds TSB had in fact, been behind the More Than card that I was so happy with. They’d decided to tell More Than to get knotted in fact so More Than were simply unable to offer me the card any longer, rather than More Than telling me to get knotted because they’d got fed up of me (you see – I had a complex by this time). At least this restores my faith in More Than a bit.

I am not at all sure what the data protection regulations are in regard to this – I think I want to find out. You see, I thought I had a deal with More Than and that they and they alone had access to my personal information. In fact, of course, Lloyds TSB also had access to this information, I now discover. So, I feel abused in as much as I now realise that someone else who I’d not known about, was crawling all over my personal stuff. They now know things such as my Mum’s maiden name and my place of birth and I have to say that especially now that I realise they don’t give the slightest flying f*ck about me, I am extremely uncomfortable about that.

The letter told me they were very sorry that I didn’t want a card that didn’t offer cash back or online access but tough – Lloyds TSB don’t get their hands mucky with that sort of thing but anyway, they’d love to have my custom. You know what? I just don’t get it. What can’t they comprehend. I want two things from a credit card and their cards offer neither – why on earth can’t they work out that I’m NEVER going to take an account that doesn’t deliver to meet my needs – first rule of sales – sell your product to meet your customer’s needs. Simple.

Last week I got another letter from them, trying to sell me insurance. They can only have done this if they had used my details from their thwarted attempt to get me to sup with the devil and take a card from them. So, now I am victim of mass-market direct mail (one of the most terrible, underhand, vile wastes of resource on the planet in my view) from them because of this. I was not happy.

Imagine, therefore, my delight to receive another bit of direct mail from them this morning. In it was a lovely letter from their ‘head of cards marketing’, a chap called Jose Carvalho, who told me that once again, I am such a good customer that I can have four more ‘free’ cheques. I’m sure he’s an extremely nice bloke but this is getting on my wick now. Interestingly enough, of course, they had the account number on them of the account that I never wanted, was completely unsolicited and closed immediately I realised what they’d had the brass-necked gall to go and do.

What to do now? Well, I reasoned that I’d almost certainly be legally required to pay back the money to them if I used the cheques so that was out of the question, even though I did consider for an all-too-brief moment popping down to the local car dealership who are advertising a very nice ’55 Chevy Belair – my dream car and handing over one of the cheques in exchange for her.

Then I remembered. I’d obviously pissed them off by exposing their antics in my diary before and telling the world what a bunch of charlatans they are because they’d already slapped my wrists for it by letter. So, (she says with a glint in her eye) here they are again – trying to coerce me into a credit agreement with them by underhand means, even though one of their (and can you believe this cringe-worthy job title) ‘customer concerns managers’ told me the matter was closed, even though they’d welcome me back(!) with open arms should I decide to become their customer.

Guess what I’m going to do now? Right, you’ve guessed it – another print-out of this but this time, it’s going to two people whose names I now know – the ‘customer concerns manager’ and the head of cards marketing. Hopefully one of them will have enough intelligence to make sure my name and personal details are completely eradicated from their marketing databases and that I never hear from them again.

Mind you, I have to say ‘thanks’ in one respect – they did at least give me an opportunity to carry out a bit of pyromania, which, as my regular readers know, is one of my specialties.

Oh and by the way Lloyds TSB – this isn’t some little thing that no-one ever looks at, if you go to my profile page, you’ll notice that there have been nearly two million visits to my pages since I started this. You may think I am ‘fair game’, but I am certainly NOT.

(Sorry to my regular readers, rant over, normal service resumed tomorrow.)

Last year, I was telling the world how much I love my friends.