Can't believe it's been this long since my previous post, basically because it's taken the bank this long to finally reply to my letter. (They had to 'refer it back to the Woolwich as they didn't have the info', so of course that meant they had to open up another case number and give themselves another 21 days to respond or whatever it is. Yet the reply came back from Barlcalys not the Woolwich and basically says they can't tell me anyway. Talk about delaying tactics, they're really starting to p*** me off now, sorry). Anyway the reply I had was this... As regards your mention of ''manual intervention", the Data Protection Act ("DPA'') does not oblige the Bank to comment about internal policies and procedures. Furthermore, in the context of managing day to day transactions arising from out of order accounts, the Bank does not hold the information you have requested in a form that would be covered by the DPA. Whilst aggregated information is retained for statistical purposes, this would not constitute ''personal data'' under the DPA and therefore would not be covered by a subject access request under the DPA. For the avoidance of doubt, the fact that we do not generally record information in a way that is caught by the provisions of the DPA, is in no way an admission that there was no such manual intervention. I trust that this clarifies the position under the DPA. You should continue to liaise with our Customer Relations advisors regarding wider issues relating to your claim. Err quite. So is this kind of response pretty standard and do I proceed with the Court action, even though it hasn't really answered what is essentially the basis of the argument? Any more advise appreciated please. Chas

I'm going to send a lettter asking for confirmation on the manual intervention issue, better to be safe unless anyone can advise me differently. Still not sure whehow to approach this with the claim, is it that much different if it's not in the small claims track? Will I need a solicitor? Thanks in advance, Chas

Thanks for the welcome and advice Allyxia, I'll look at reducing the amount in this claim to under £5000, I have some other charges acrued since my LBA anyway so I can make a claim for these at a later date. Anyone got any advice over the manual intervention thing please?

Hi all, Been reading the site for a while now and now have my own action in progress against the Woolwich. The state of play atm is that I am making preperations to file my claim with the court, but I have a couple of questions please as I'm suffering from a severe case of information overload atm, so apologies if for asking anything stupid and that's been covered a thousand times already. When I first started this I had not come across this site and used a standard letter found elsewhere. Because of this, it was only when I sent the LBA (after I'd found the site), that I asked for confirmation about any manual intervention, to which they have not responded. I see this is used as part of the argument against the excessiveness of the charges. Is it worth me pursuing this to get a response and if so do you think I should hold off submitting the papers to the court or should I carry on anyway? Secondly, my claim os for just over £5000 (£5057 to be precise) excluding interest (£1903.15 if I've filled the spreadsheet in correctly) which takes it over the Small Claims threshold. Does this make a lot of difference to how things proceed what is the difference? Am I better off reducing the amount to £5000 plus interest, that's assuming the interest is not included for determining the level of my claim, or is that not correct? Thanks in advance for any help. Chas