Mother: Bank insisted on speaking to infant

CHESLYN HAY, England, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- A British mother said a bank call center operator said he could only give account information to the account holder, her infant son.

Jenny Nicholls, 31, of Cheslyn Hay, England, said she called bank Halifax Thursday after she and her husband, Andrew, 34, received a notice saying a deposit into the Kids Regular Saver account they had set up for their 6-month-old son, Harry, had failed due to incorrect details, The Mirror reported Monday.

"We waited in the queue and entered all the account security information then the man came on the line and said 'Is that Mr. Harry Nicholls?'" the mother said. "I said no. He asked if he could talk to Harry but I said he's a baby, he can't talk. I said I'm his mum but he just said he was sorry but he couldn't talk to me over the phone, only to the account holder. I said 'are you being serious?' I thought it was a joke at first and then he would notice it was a child's account, but he was being serious."

A Halifax representative apologized for the incident.

"We're very sorry for Mrs. Nicholls' experience and it is clear that a mistake was made," the representative said. "Our Kids Regular Saver account cannot be managed over the phone and Mrs. Nicholls should have been advised of this as soon as she called us. We'll look into this to determine what went wrong."