Irate client pays Visa pennies

A 62-year-old retired city councillor from Kingston, Ont., paid his $230 Visa bill last month in 985 instalments, often pennies at a time, to protest against the fact that his bank outsourced some of its credit card processing to a U.S. company. Mr. Rogers said he asked Vancouver-based Citizens Bank of Canada several times to end the practice, because U.S. authorities could potentially gain access to his personal information under the wide-ranging Patriot Act, a piece of legislation designed to crack down on terrorism.

When the bank refused to take action, he decided to employ what he describes as his "creative solution" -- paying down his Visa in tiny increments over the Internet and generating a statement that was 35 pages long and a half-inch thick.

'Us retired guys are the most dangerous, because we have time on our hands. You have to look for the weaknesses in their system, and I think I found it.'