A Guardian reader reported that Barclaycard kept sending them emails and payment reminders for a credit card account they never applied for, after the bank confused them with another customer of a similar name. Despite alerting Barclaycard immediately and repeatedly contacting customer service, the reader continued receiving mounting overdue payment notifications, causing significant distress, while the mix-up also exposed private financial information about the other, unrelated customer.

Barclaycard attributed the error to "human error" and only removed the reader's email address from the wrong account 13 months after it was first reported. The bank apologised for the delay and offered £200 in compensation for the inconvenience caused.