I opened an account at Midland Bank (Now HSBC) on the day I left school. I went there because my dad had his account there and he took me in to open my first proper account.

They were useless. At one point, after having left home under a cloud for the first time I called them to say I had moved and impressed upon them the need for nothing to be sent to my old address, I then went into the bank to tell them in person, wrote a letter and called to check that it had arrived. They sent my new card to my parent's house, along with the PIN. This caused me some difficulty.

The letter I sent to the Head Office was a work of genius from someone so young. They grovelled for months.

We bumped along together over the years till they screwed up my account and sent me a letter blaming me and charging me £10.

I wrote back, thanking them for their unsolicited letter, pointing out that they were to blame and that I would from that point on be charging an £8 fee for reading any unsolicited or unnecessary mail and £10 for each letter I had to send them as a result.

They sent back to me a letter saying they didn't understand what I meant about charging them.

I wrote back to explain the charging system in more detail and pointed out that they now owed me £18 for the previous letter, £18 for that letter and an £8 fee for reading a rather offensive letter that I had also received from their marketing department trying to frighten me into taking out life insurance.

I then started sending them invoices and charging them £10 admin for each invoice reminder. I also returned all their junk mail with an £8 reading fee plus an admin fee for returning the literature to them and a small amount for postage.

By the time I started sending red "final demand" notices they were in debt to me for about £160. I had copies pinned up in work and people were running a sweep on how high it would get.

I don't know how they tracked me down to my extension in work (I was living in London and the bank was back in Wales) but they were begging for mercy.

I'm with the Co-op now