I wanted to keep this as subtle as possible so I won't put any terms in here that will trigger any alarm bells. Not sure how to go about this but here it goes!

September 2016 I begin working (sorry, I mean, self-employed 'sub-contracting') as a courier for a firm who provided its services to a Fortune 500 company, 12th on the 2017 list to be precise, you know, the one recently famous for its dealings with shoddy courier companies? ....Now your getting the picture

After a few months we heard said F500 company was taking "tips" from customers by default via the online checkout, these tips were suppose to be paid to drivers. We of course were never informed about this and never saw a dime.

The reason why tips where offered by customers is, we were forced daily to carry up over hundreds of kilo's of shopping purchased to flats with no lifts. Mostly being boxes of water IN THE DOZENS! (like that wasn’t bad enough, all of the weight was put into paper bags. No handles, no trays or trolley's provided to carry them up. All done by hand.) The customers obviously did this on purpose, so they won't have to. And I’m guessing in exchange for their guilt, would tip us a few quid for the back killing pain we where left in.

Now I, along with the rest of us working (sorry, ‘contracting’) for this firm where not aware this was happening until one day a driver brought it to our attention that other contracting firms are paying their drivers tips. When we queried this, our firm said that the F500 company did not provide them with any tips.

After a few months, we started asking other companies drivers to show us their invoices, and they were all earning over £100 a week in tips alone! (50-70 hour weeks however) This became even more apparent when customers where asking us if we received our tips or not, for which we had to lie and say we did so they won’t get upset.

Furious, over 20 drivers mounted pressure on our firm and demanded an explanation. When a few drivers were “dismissed” for doing this, we went and complained to managers at the F500 company directly. We got a straight up “you don’t work for us, you work for them, so deal with them. You are not our problem.”

Essentially, the F500 company knew that this firm was taking the tips that was suppose to be for us, and pocketing it for themselves. This went on for almost a year. If the maths is correct, that is £100 x 100 drivers x 52 weeks = thats over HALF A MILLION !!!

The point is the F500 company knew the tips would never arrive to the drivers yet took it by default from the customers at checkout. (the customer had to opt-out of paying manually.) This is deceptive and borderline fraud. They turned a blind eye for almost a year.

After all the noise we began making, the F500 company knew they were in deep sh!t when the word got out, so they decided to cancel the contract with our firm, and within 24 hours we had all lost our jobs... just like that. Conveniently, our firm dissolved shortly after.

Broke, with no income, and nothing else to do a few of us decided to file a Subject Access Request from said F500 company. We followed all procedures down to the letter and also paid the £10 for them to give us details of all the tips that was paid by customers, intended for us.

However, even now, after 80 days, we have not heard anything back. The letters where sent recorded delivery to the compliance department, so we know they received them.

Question is, where do we go from here? Do we even have a case?

A SAR would only be able to provide you with data relating to you personally. It would not have scope under the DPA to provide you with payments made by customers TO the business even if they were meant to have gone to you eventually. Any such request would only ever be able to show you payments actually paid, not those retained by the organisation

Nevertheless you should have received some sort of request even if only an explanation as to why further information could not be provided, so for that, a complaint to the ICO should be in order

I’m assuming these tips haven’t been presented in cash by your customers. A very brief internet search uncovered this...

“Tips paid voluntarily by customers that are added to a credit card payment or even to a cheque become the property of your employer when they are paid. In fact, your employer is entitled to keep this money in its entirety but may choose to distribute it amongst staff.”

https://www.unlockthelaw.co.uk/News/can-my-employer-keep-my-tips-1/646974139.html

You might want to investigate and confirm this as that would seriously undermine your apparent (and understandable) desire to claim these tips from your employer.

Your problem is that your employer no longer exists so you cant go after the co that trousered the money.

Now the only people who have recouse to action are those who are unwittingly or wittingly paying the tip in the first place as the Co that collects the money isnt performing their contractual obligations.

In short, you are owed nowt regradless of the intention of the person paying the tip and the peopel paying it need to recalim the money from their card provider. You coould report them for theft or fraud but it will require a lot of input from your customers so I dotn see it progressing very far