Banks who don't cash the £10 DPA cheque

[PhantomReclaimer]

I've noticed from many posts that people are saying that banks are often not cashing their Data Protection Act Subject Access Request fee cheques, or not asking for them in the first place, I wonder why? This seems very strange to me and most certainly highly out of character for such profit concious organisations.

 

I can't help but think that there is more than a simple "can't be bothered" or "Isn't financially worthwhile" answer to this. I mean, these firms have shareholders who will be concerned to make sure that everything is being done to off-set the losses incurred by having to repay off of these charges and simply not taking money when it's offered seems a bit negligent to me.

 

Have they spotted some good legal reason for not banking the cheques? Is there something that we don't realise we are entitled to that they aren't providing when they send us our information that we would be contractually obliged to had they banked the money, I wonder???

 

Or is all of this making me far too cynical?

 

P.

[Glenn UK]

Im not sure of the reason, from my reading of the situaiton is that they can charge a fee, by not banking the fee they are alluding to the fact that actually they are not dealing with the S.A.R - (Subject Access Request) as a notice under Sec 7 (is that the right bit?)

 

In my view you have offered payment, the fact they reject payment is their business, the act doesnt appear to state a minimum fee only that they may chagre a max of £10.

 

In my view you need to see what response you get and act accordingly, the abbey and barclaycard both appear to be rejecting the SAR by various means when they resopnd to the applicant.

 

I am taking the view that upon the recipt of such a rejcetion i am reasserting my rights under the Data Protection Act by writing back restating my postion and confriming the deadline.

 

Not sure how much legal force there is in either sides approach. At least if it gets to court then i have recorded delivery slips showing my rejection of thier position.

 

JMHO

 

Glenn

[sandrajl]

Arr!... maybe they wont cash my cheque then, as its from the acct they are charging me for being overdrawn, if they do, does that mean i can claim another charge from them ???

[PhantomReclaimer]

Arr!... maybe they wont cash my cheque then, as its from the acct they are charging me for being overdrawn, if they do, does that mean i can claim another charge from them ???

 

Personally, I've not sent any. I've told them to advise me of any fee which may apply to my request (they may want to charge less than £10) so if they want to request one then fine.

 

P.

[Glenn UK]

Personally, I've not sent any. I've told them to advise me of any fee which may apply to my request (they may want to charge less than £10) so if they want to request one then fine.

 

P.

 

The only problem with that is that you are handing them an in built additional delay.

 

Im not sure what the legal position is but perhpas they could shove your request in a pile for 'send request for fee' letters.

 

Then when they get your fee they ask fo additonal id.

 

It may not happen but i took the view i would try to prevent any unnecessary delyas by sending the £10 and id.

 

JHMO

 

glenn

[PhantomReclaimer]

 

Im not sure what the legal position is but perhpas they could shove your request in a pile for 'send request for fee' letters.

 

 

You have a point but I'm not in a huge hurry anyway. If they want to delay it's their problem because I intend to include the Contrat rate of interest on all of my demands anyway. Besides, none of them have made any great attempts to publish what their charge for this information actually is (the max is a tenner but they can charge anything up to that or nothing at all) and if I haven't heard anything 7 days after their recept of the letter I will be harassing them on the phone and informing the information commissioner.

 

If they really wanted to delay then sending a cheque would not be guaranteed to be any quicker, they could pull a similar trick in reverse on all those who send £10 cheques - "sorry but our charge is £9.99, please send another cheque" - and still probably wouldn't bank it anyway.

 

P.

[Glenn UK]

Pr

 

i can see your point, i guess the truth is that if they want to be really argumentative they cold evne if you send the cheque and id.

 

I guess my viewpoint was to be able to show, in court if necessary, that i had been acting in good faith as far as is reasonable.

 

Glenn

[Bean]

For accounts that are still active, I suggest the best way is to grant your authorisation for them to take up to the maximum statutory sum of £10 from your account. For closed accounts, send a £10 cheque (drawn from another account!).

 

In my experience, they either charge £10 or nothing.

 

I don't think there's anything sinister in a bank not banking a £10 cheque for a Data Protection Act Subject Access Request. Remember that they have policies in place for everything and presumably these can take a little time to change. If they get concerned about the amount it's costing them, they have to change their policy then implement it. I expect that all the banks are closely watching their costs in relation to this whole issue;) .

[Bean]

These two comments are inconsistent:

...I'm not in a huge hurry anyway...if I haven't heard anything 7 days after their recept of the letter I will be harassing them on the phone and informing the information commissioner...

 

...and the Information Commissioner would surely only be interested in them not complying within 40 days.