Just got my main PC back from being mended so I've had a look in quicken.

That reckons I've paid the abbey £900 in charges since 2002 (when i started using quicken).

If I go back to April 2000 then it should be more as the year 2000 was when I had a lot of trouble with banks etc.

So today I have written my DPA request and sent it off with the £10 fee and we shall see what happens.

Just been to open a basic bank account with Yorkshire building society in case abbey get the hump and boot me out after 17years!

Was stunned that the lady behind the counter remembered my name (I'd been in two weeks ago to open a savings account for my son).

It took a lot of thought for me to decide to reclaim the charges. I have been with abbey since I was a tot so I have a misguided sense of loyalty which will no doubt be shattered by their responses.

Will keep you all posted!

Capital one will probably be next in line but I want to bring the balance down a bit first as I could not cope if they asked me to pay it back in one go.

Just sent the DPA letter for the 3 accounts (2 of which I know the number and 1 I don't).

The one I don't know the number for is one of two defaults on my otherwise OK credit record.

I am really cheesed off that I have been living with poor credit for 5 1/2 years because of the result of their illegal and punitive charges.

This is what you get for 30 years loyalty is it?

Welcome, and well done. Don't expect anything like loyalty from banks. All they are interested in is profits

I am going to get really spiteful with them and close any and all accounts I have with them. Including my sons savings and the account my partner and I pay money in to save for holidays etc.

My son will NOT be an abbey customer. It would not be wise to let him think they are nice people. He's only 8 months old but I am going to teach him that banks are nasty people that look after your money OK but you have to keep an eye on them!

Got a big envelope from the abbey with a letter and 3 wads of printouts.

Account A - an instant plus account set up to pay DD's out of. This went into OD by a few quid and snowballed into £102.75 debt being passed onto a debt collector. This is the one that has really peed me off as I have been living with a bad credit rating for 6 years. Print-outs have just given me the account number (which I didn't have!) and some info about when the account was opened and closed (June 2000).

Account B - an instant plus account with an electron card. I mainly keep this at about £50 to feed the electron card which I use for petrol and the odd bit of shopping. Print outs have given me account movements back to Feb 05 (14 months). Nothing I didn't really know.

Account C - a current account I have held since Oct 88, all my adult working life. My wages go in here and all my DD's and SO's come out of here.

This card is operated with a cashcard and a cheque book. Won't give me a cheque guarantee card or a debit card as I had a £2500 overdraft which got out of hand. Every time I need a new cheque book the "underwriters" have to be asked. Every time they ask me about the cheque book I reported lost in washing machine in 1997, they always give me a new cheque book.

Print outs have given me some info about the overdraft history. Account movements go back to Sep 04 (18 months?). First sheet says "TOTAL PENDING CHARGES 100.00-" - I got hit for £50 on Monday so it seems there are another £50 pending I haven't been told about! This might be for paying my £2.50 SO to my baby sons abbey savings account!

Basically so far nothing I didn't know but it's good to have the charges in black and white.

Letter reads as follows (have taken the time to type it in as I've not seen it before on anyones threads. If admin want a copy PM me and I will scan it in.

My thoughts in italics

"Dear Heppy23,

account numbers xxxxx, xxxxx & xxxxxxxx

Thank you for your letter dated 30 March 2006. I note that you are specifically requesting the details relating to transactions and charges made to your bank and instant plus accounts. I also acknowledge receipt of your £10 fee.

Fine, pleasantly suprised at speed of response.

Under a Data protection act disclosure request, you will only receive the transactional information that is held on our systems. Any transactions prior to this have been archived onto microfiche, which is not covered by the data protection act. In order to assist you, I have enclosed the transactional information remaining on our systems.

OK. So you have sent as much as is on your computer. I still don't know why you archive computer stuff onto microfiche? Job creation?

There is an administration fee for the supply of microfiche records, which are as follows:-

• £5 for 1 monthly statement which has been archived
  
• £10 for multiple monthly statements, which have been archived

Cheap compared to other charges!

As it is clear from your letter that you require multiple statements, I have fowarded your request together with your £10 fee, to the relevant business area. I confirm that they will forward the microfiche records you have requested in due course.

Due course is as long as a piece of string I suppose?

You have also asked for details of any "manual interventions" that there may have been on your account. Although I am not entirely clear as to what information it is that you require, I am taking a "manual intervention" to be any action taken with regard to your account other than an automatic or computer-driven action.

Good definition.

You will appreciate that first of all, not all manual interventions on your account will be recorded. For example, if a member of staff looks at a paper document relating to your account, a record of activity will not always be made. Moreover, an "intervention" may be carried out by any one of a large number of departments in Abbey. There is no central record of such interventions because this is not the kind of information we usually need not, more importantly, information that a customer would normal (sic) request.

So basically she is saying that anyone at the abbey can do anything to my account and it's untraceable?

I regret therefore that I am unable to supply detailed information of any manual intervention. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

I trust that this meets with your requirements.

Yours sincerely,

Jackie Scott

Data Protection Consultant"

My reply will be along the lines of thanks for letter and stuff sent so far.

Hope rest of stuff will satisfy my requirements.

Not sure what to say about microfiche.

Going to make a comment about £5 per microfiche reprint being cheap for a clearly manual intervention compared to £20-£30 for a letter that has clearly been spat out by a computer.

Going to say that as I made info request under DPA I expect information within the 40 days. Also going to comment that maybe the information commisioner would be interested to know that any abbey employee can access and alter my accounts without any kind of tracking/audit trail.

Any thoughts?

Going to put charges so far into the excel file in the meantime.

i always thought that anyone accessing our accounts through computers had to log in first.my brother was one of the main web designers which created RBOS onlinesome 6/7 years ago(also another bank),it was the first bank to go online and he told me that anyone going into his system for any reason had to have some form of clearence which was always logged on the server.

i.e.no one could pop into your account drop £5k by adding a couple of 000 to the end of your fiver,without being traced.

surely abbey have the same system.

There must be some sort of tracking system. My other half works for the NHS and has been told that they will be discplined if they look at their own test results on the computer system.

I have started a new thread as my old thread wasn't getting any replies, apologies in advance if this isn't the done thing.

Got a big envelope from the abbey with a letter and 3 wads of printouts.

Account A - an instant plus account set up to pay DD's out of. This went into OD by a few quid and snowballed into £102.75 debt being passed onto a debt collector. This is the one that has really peed me off as I have been living with a bad credit rating for 6 years. Print-outs have just given me the account number (which I didn't have!) and some info about when the account was opened and closed (June 2000).

Account B - an instant plus account with an electron card. I mainly keep this at about £50 to feed the electron card which I use for petrol and the odd bit of shopping. Print outs have given me account movements back to Feb 05 (14 months). Nothing I didn't really know.

Account C - a current account I have held since Oct 88, all my adult working life. My wages go in here and all my DD's and SO's come out of here.

This card is operated with a cashcard and a cheque book. Won't give me a cheque guarantee card or a debit card as I had a £2500 overdraft which got out of hand. Every time I need a new cheque book the "underwriters" have to be asked. Every time they ask me about the cheque book I reported lost in washing machine in 1997, they always give me a new cheque book.

Print outs have given me some info about the overdraft history. Account movements go back to Sep 04 (18 months?). First sheet says "TOTAL PENDING CHARGES 100.00-" - I got hit for £50 on Monday so it seems there are another £50 pending I haven't been told about! This might be for paying my £2.50 SO to my baby sons abbey savings account!

Basically so far nothing I didn't know but it's good to have the charges in black and white.

Letter reads as follows (have taken the time to type it in as I've not seen it before on anyones threads. If admin want a copy PM me and I will scan it in.

My thoughts in italics

"Dear Heppy23,

account numbers xxxxx, xxxxx & xxxxxxxx

Thank you for your letter dated 30 March 2006. I note that you are specifically requesting the details relating to transactions and charges made to your bank and instant plus accounts. I also acknowledge receipt of your £10 fee.

Fine, pleasantly suprised at speed of response.

Under a Data protection act disclosure request, you will only receive the transactional information that is held on our systems. Any transactions prior to this have been archived onto microfiche, which is not covered by the data protection act. In order to assist you, I have enclosed the transactional information remaining on our systems.

OK. So you have sent as much as is on your computer. I still don't know why you archive computer stuff onto microfiche? Job creation?

There is an administration fee for the supply of microfiche records, which are as follows:-

• £5 for 1 monthly statement which has been archived
  
• £10 for multiple monthly statements, which have been archived

Cheap compared to other charges!

As it is clear from your letter that you require multiple statements, I have fowarded your request together with your £10 fee, to the relevant business area. I confirm that they will forward the microfiche records you have requested in due course.

Due course is as long as a piece of string I suppose?

You have also asked for details of any "manual interventions" that there may have been on your account. Although I am not entirely clear as to what information it is that you require, I am taking a "manual intervention" to be any action taken with regard to your account other than an automatic or computer-driven action.

Good definition.

You will appreciate that first of all, not all manual interventions on your account will be recorded. For example, if a member of staff looks at a paper document relating to your account, a record of activity will not always be made. Moreover, an "intervention" may be carried out by any one of a large number of departments in Abbey. There is no central record of such interventions because this is not the kind of information we usually need not, more importantly, information that a customer would normal (sic) request.

So basically she is saying that anyone at the abbey can do anything to my account and it's untraceable?

I regret therefore that I am unable to supply detailed information of any manual intervention. I am sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

I trust that this meets with your requirements.

Yours sincerely,

Jackie Scott

Data Protection Consultant"

My reply will be along the lines of thanks for letter and stuff sent so far.

Hope rest of stuff will satisfy my requirements.

Not sure what to say about microfiche.

Going to make a comment about £5 per microfiche reprint being cheap for a clearly manual intervention compared to £20-£30 for a letter that has clearly been spat out by a computer.

Going to say that as I made info request under DPA I expect information within the 40 days. Also going to comment that maybe the information commisioner would be interested to know that any abbey employee can access and alter my accounts without any kind of tracking/audit trail.

Any thoughts?

Going to put charges so far into the excel file in the meantime.

MODERATED post moved to original thread..Your posts will be getting read .starting new threads just makes more work for us and gives us even less time to reply to people.

MODERATED post moved to original thread..Your posts will be getting read .starting new threads just makes more work for us and gives us even less time to reply to people.

Sorry, I was worried I was talking to myself. Can anyone comment please? Even if to say "looks fine, go for it".

It looks fine .. please be assured that we are reading your posts but now because of the sheer volume of the site we don't reply to every posting.If at any time you ask something that is worrying you and after giving some time for an answer and still don't seem to be getting any reply it may be that everyone who has read it just never had an answer to it so just PM a moderator and we will try and sort it out for you.

As long as everything seems to be going ok you may not always get a response.

Hope this helps somewhat

Microfiche problem.

This is the approach I have addopted - as to whether it will deal with the issue finally we have to wait and see, since I only sent this yesterday:

I am in receipt of your letter dated 4th April 2006, outlining that you could only provide me with printouts covering the last 13 months on my account, because any earlier information has been archived onto microfiche. Enclosed was a list of transactions and account detail covering that 13 month period.

My request was for a complete list of transactions and charges relating to our account since 1st April 2000 – in short, a list of charges with dates and amounts – alternatively, a complete set of account statements for that period will be acceptable. This should be retrievable from your accounting systems, and easy for you to produce. I will accept a computer print out of these transactions.

I am aware that you have been willing and able to provide other customers with a print-out of six years transaction information – and am happy to provide evidence of this to the Information Commissioner should it prove necessary. I would also draw your attention to Smith v Lloyds TSB Bank plc (2005) EWHC 246 (Ch).

This letter has been sent by first class recorded delivery, and therefore should have reached you by Monday April 10th – as you will be aware, as of this date you have just 26 days in which to comply with my request. As stated above, a complete set of account statements for the period in question will be acceptable; however, I expect this to be provided within the time period for DPA compliance.

Should there be any further attempts to delay compliance, I will be left with no alternative but to escalate this matter into an official complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Hope this helps.

I am sending abbey a letter and will base it on that. The DPA stuff I got hasn't got anything in it I didn't really know. I am VERY tempted to ask for an appointment with someone in branch to go through the printouts and ask them to explain everything. The DPA printout I got from barclaycard was much clearer, each thing had a plain english explanation.

Looks fine so far.

I'd avoid meeting face to face if it were me, do everything by letter where possible!

Sending the following (thanks to alanfromderby for using snippets of his letter)

Ref accounts xxxxx,xxxxxx,xxxxx

Dear Ms Scott,

Thanks for your letter dated 4th April which came with some printed information as a result of my request for information under the data protection act.

Although difficult to read the information held was very comprehensive going back to when I opened the first account in 1988, nearly 18 years ago. There were details of the old overdraft I had, name changes and all sorts of things. What was not very well covered were the charges that had been applied to my account over the years.

You state you are unable to provide statement based information going back before a certain date because it has been archived onto microfiche and as such is not covered by the data protection act (DPA).

I work with computers and it does not make sense to me that someone would take computer based information and archive it to microfiche. This cannot be cost effective given the constant lowering of the prices of computer systems. I know of several people that have had full statement information going back 6 years or more and they have not been told their information has been microfiched.

I am happy to provide evidence of this to the Information Commissioner should it prove necessary. I would also draw your attention to Smith v Lloyds TSB Bank plc (2005) EWHC 246 (Ch).

The only conclusion is that the information is put onto microfiche to “sweep it under the carpet” and make it harder to access.

In my letter dated 30th March 2006 I asked, as a data protection act request “Please supply me with a complete list of transactions and charges relating to my three bank accounts since 1st April 2000. Alternatively a complete set of bank statements for that period will be acceptable.” It is your organisation that has chosen to make this information only available on bank statements. I said bank statements would be an acceptable version of the information because I presumed that would be helpful to you in accessing information to help me. You have turned that round in an attempt to fob me off and hope I will go away. I should remind you that you have 40 days to make full disclosure as per my request or I will report you to the information commissioner.

You said you would get someone to forward me microfiche records. It is now one week since your letter and if I have not received the information by the 9th of May (40 days from my request under the DPA) I WILL take this up the the information commissioner.

The clock is ticking!

Finally, with regard to my request for information about manual interventions, yes your definition of “any action taken with regard to your account other than an automatic or computer-driven action” matches my definition.

You say that no record of manual intervention is kept. This information is alarming to me, does this mean any employee of the abbey can look at any piece of information in my account and make any alteration and there will be no form of record keeping? Is my money and personal information safe with the Abbey?

I look forward to hearing from you. Please expedite the microfiche information. You are a large organisation and I cannot believe it is taking you this long.

Yours sincerely,

heppy23

Just got a statement from the scabby.

They are hitting me for another £50 (£20 overdraft fee and £30 for paying a direct debit) on the 3rd of May. Quite neatly that is a few days before the DPA 40 days runs out so they better have sent me all the stuff by then.

I WILL be claiming the money back. I WILL report them to IC and I WILL take my business elsewhere.

I'm tempted to phone up but I know I would lose my temper.

Just got a letter from the abbey. Looks to me like they are trying to cut down on being reported to the IC by the looks of it. Interestingly they haven't used my account number as a reference but instead SS/SAR. I wonder if this is a standard letter?

"Dear Heppy23,

Thank you for your letter dated 11 April 2006 regarding your request for a copy of transactional data held about your bank account.

I can confirm that you have been provided with all the transactional information you are entitled to under the Data protection act.

I can only reiterate that under the data protection act, the transactional information retained on microfiche is not covered, as it does not form part of a "relevant filing system". However, I can confirm that Abbey have made arrangements to send you the information requested which is held on microfiche, as soon as it has been retrieved from our archives.

With regard to the comments in your penultimate paragraph, I would assure you that we take issues to security very seriously. Staff are only allowed to access customer records when there is a legitimate business reason for them to do so and we have various internal checks in place to ensure this procedure is not breached. As these checks are essentially fraud prevention measures, I hope you will understand why it would be inappropriate for me to discuss them in any detail.

Sheena Small"

"It took a lot of thought for me to decide to reclaim the charges. I have been with abbey since I was a tot so I have a misguided sense of loyalty which will no doubt be shattered by their responses."

Heppy, when you were a tot the Abbey was a Building Society, so technically it was "owned" by you, or I dare say by your parents, as "shareholders".

Since then it has demutualised, become a "High Street" bank thus trying to compete with the big boys, had a disasterous attempt at merchant banking and been taken over by a large Spanish financial institution. It is no longer the same institution it was when you were a little one I am afraid, far from it in fact.

I know they used to be nice. I had shares from when they floated but sold them.

My Dad kept his up until the Spaniards took Abbey over. Shame, it would have been interesting to see if a shareholder would have got a different response to a customer.

Interesting development.

I sent the enclosed to the abbey about 3 weeks ago

"Dear Ms Robertson,

I refer to you letter dated 16th March 2006. I enclose a copy for your reference as although you have “signed” it, it is clearly automatically generated.

What can I say? I am sorry this standing order for £2.50 took my account into minus figures.

The £2.50 is a weekly standing order into an abbey savings account for my baby son William.

We are trying to bring William up with a healthy attitude to money and savings. It seems that abbey does not share this attitude by spitting out letters about transfers from one abbey account to the other.

To punish me for helping him to save is not the way I want William to learn about saving.

I am a loyal abbey customer. I have had accounts with Abbey for as long as I can remember. I have continued to bank with the abbey despite not living near an abbey branch for the last 8 years.

You reward this loyalty by levelling punitive charges against me for the most minor of account infringements. Your organisation regularly dips into my account and takes dis-proportionate sums of money in relation to minor transactions.

You say in your letter “Don’t forget that we’re here to help you manage your money”. Well I am sorry but I do not believe you. The abbey has changed and not for the better.

I am currently in the process of moving my finances away from the abbey. My loyalty to you is gone. No more blind faith that you have my best interests at heart.

I have closed Williams savings account as well as another family savings account. William will not follow me into being an Abbey customer. I will tell him the truth about your misdeeds with regards to charges. I am taking steps to close all my abbey accounts and end my lifelong association with the abbey. And if anyone in your organisation cares enough to ask, it was your enclosed letter that was the straw that broke the camels back.

Yours sincerely,"

I have had nothing back but the standard "we are looking into this and will get back to you".

I knew I was waiting for them to hit me for another £50. They have taken it today BUT they have refunded it straight away without me asking.

I wonder if that happens when your account is flagged "He's really ****ed off, don't upset him anymore".

As it stands I am just waiting for one more DD to go out then I am probably going to follow through on my threat to close the account.

This topic was closed on 03/07/19.

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