Few things are more frown-making to me than the erroneous blame game whereby client cockups* are passed off as "a printing error". However, earlier this week I experienced a wince-inducing moment when reading about a credit data leak involving the Goldfish credit card, when as many as 15,000 customer statements were sent to the wrong addresses.

Not being a Goldfish customer myself I'm not familiar with their statementing methodology, but I was surprised to read one report claiming the error involved customers receiving an envelope addressed to them, but with someone else's statement inside, which seemed unlikely. Other reports said that customers received their own front page, but subsequent sheets had another customer's details. More likely.

Whatever, it appears that Goldfish's explanation that a fault at its printing firm was to blame is accurate in this instance. Aside from the current hyper-interest in data breaches of any kind (witness today's hoo-hah about a data loss involving details of 84,000 offenders), what makes this doubly interesting is this week's news that Barclays is reviewing its huge transactional print contract, currently held by RR Donnelley Global Document Solutions. And Barclays acquired Goldfish earlier this year. This particular printing error should make for some interesting dialogue betwixt Barclays and potential suppliers regarding the robustness of systems at its outsourcing partners. I watch with interest.

*I was startled to find that the blog management software is automatically censoring cockup written as I originally typed it, with a hyphen, and also if written as two separate words. It substitutes asterisks for cock (see, it's doing it again) which makes it look like I selected a rather ruder word! E-censorship is alive and well. I can have a cocktail or a cockerel, but I can't be cock-a-hoop.