Jen v Abbey

[essjaysea]

I have been recruited by my ex wife to see if she can reclaim all her charges. She is not that good with money matters, and feels sure that she has lost £1000's over the years.

So I sent off a Data Protection Act S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) to see whats what. They have until November 21st to respond

[Lula]

Well good luck to you and your ex

[essjaysea]

Received a response from Abbey, acknowledging my letter of 12th October.

They have agreed to send me 14 months of statements, which they refer to as "transactional information", remaining on their systems, within 7 working days of 31st October, (the date of their letter). They claim that all previous transactions have been "archived onto microfiche", and they further claim that it is not possible to provide a computer print out of the information. However, they have made arrangements to send a list of archived transactions from 2000 to 2005. This, I presume, is a direct result of the investigation carried out, and reported on recently by the Information Commissioner

They also address the issue of "manual intervention". They confirm that they consider manual intervention to "mean an action that is not automatic or computer driven". They go on to say that "not all manual interventions are recorded, for example if a member of staff looks at a paper document relating to your account, a record is not always required. Similarly some interventions may relate to work carried out by a department rather than individuals where no central record of activity is kept, because this is not the kind of information we need, or more importantly, that a customer would normally request"

My thoughts on this are that they are pretty much admitting that there has been no MI. However, I will put them on notice that if they attempt to justify their charges by claiming that MI has taken place, in their defence to any subsequent claim, then by implication they will be in breach of the Data Protection Act by not disclosing this information to me, and I will report the breach to the Information Commissioner

So we now wait to see what the statements and archived transactions will reveal, and fire off the preliminary letter

[essjaysea]

Have now received all the statements from Abbey going back to Jan 2002.

I do have one question for all the dedicated Abbey followers. There are numerous entries entitled "Counter Fee" for £3.00. Does anyone have any idea what these charges relate to?