"It's a mistake"
"What the hell?"
"What?"
"Look at this!"
"What the fuck?"

That was the exchange of words between my parents one lazy saturday morning about 15 years ago, I bimbled through to the kitchen with my cup of tea to investigate what was going on. As I was doing so, my mum sprinted past me to the phone, and begin hurriedly looking for a number in the phone book.

"What's going on?", says I.
"Look at this", says my Dad.

He handed me a letter with a Barclays header:

Dear Mr & Mrs. Shifty Snr.,

We are notifying you of the intent to close your account, this is owing to the continually unpaid overdraft of £30,350,234 pounds.

(Blah)

(Blah)

Regards,
Barclays Cunts.

"You're thirty million quid overdrawn?" said I.
"Well.....there was that yacht the other week" said my Dad.
"Riiight, so it's a mistake then?" said I.
"Fucking hope so son" said my Dad.

At this point I noticed a correlation in two numbers on the letter, the amount owed, and the account number. Yep, they'd mixed the two up. I pointed this out to my dad, and it went someway to calming my mum down after she got off the phone.

I didn't witness my mum's half of the investigation, but from previous experience I'd imagine she gave some Barclays phone monkey the worst morning of their career, as well as some nasty earache.

They admitted their mistake, Barclays, but never apologised though. Nowadays you could sue them for emotional distress or some equally ridiculous claim.
(ShiftyBastard won the World Cup on World Soccer Champs 2010!, Fri 17 Jul 2009, 15:49, Reply)