I've been a customer of Nat West for 36 years. I thought I'd see what their quote was for home insurance. Lo and behold, they had that question. You know the one, whether you had EVER been convicted of a crime.

Of course I ended the quotation at that point. However, a couple of weeks later I received a survey asking why I'd not gone ahead with purchase. I wrote a whole angry screed about how they were acting illegally and against the ROA. Luckily, I thought better of it before pressing send. That would almost certainly flag me up as somebody who may have something worth background checking.

Then there is the curious case of my Metro Bank account. Last September I received a letter out of the blue that they had reviewed my account and no longer wanted me as a customer. No reason given. I rang customer services and they said I could only get that information by writing to headquarters and requesting it. It was incredibly puzzling as my account had never been in deficit and at the time had about £100 in it. I've got an excellent credit rating. I really can't think why they would want to close the account unilaterally. That said, I was just about to get a pension lump sum payout of £20,000 which allowed me to laugh at their stupidity, but it did make me think that financial services don't really care about the law because complainants would effectively be raising a red flag in the air and shouting look at me so they can get away with it.

There's nothing like a previous conviction to turn you paranoid!