@npowerhelp Npower - 2 year nightmare - Please help

[BankFodder]

I think this is as much as you need to put in the claim at this point. I was think it's better not to provide too much detail because then they can pre-empt your arguments in their defence.

 

Wait for their defence to arrive – which no doubt will start bleating on about how they didn't know who you were and they need to verify your identity. We can deal with that later.

 

 

 

The claimant sent a properly formulated subject access request made pursuant to the Data Protection Act 2018 to the defendant on XXX date.

The defendant failed to comply with their statutory duty to disclose the claimant's personal data within the lawful deadline of 30 days.

The defendant's failure to comply with the statutory request is continuing.

The defendant is in breach of their statutory duty and furthermore has caused distress and inconvenience to the claimant.

The claimant claims damages of £50

[BankFodder]

By the way, you must also begin a formal complaint to the information Commissioner.

 

You should try to do this on the telephone in the first instance and then follow up with a written complaint you can send by email. You need to get hold of a reference number for your complaint.

 

In your complaint of course you will emphasise the points that have been made here – that they have breached the time limit – but also very importantly that they are placing unlawful obstacles by demanding further identity verification when clearly they have everything they need. Point out the information Commissioner that this is to be routine for Npower.

 

You should get this off immediately and it will come in handy later on to be able to say that you have done it – and if you happen to get an opinion from the ICO that Npower are in breach then of course this will destroy any kind of defence that Npower might try to make. I suggest you do it today.

[BankFodder]

Please will you remind me where we are on this. What was your most recent communication with Npower? Did you make the complaint to the information Commissioner?

[BankFodder]

Hang on, I think that you have sent them a letter of claim and that the 14 days expires on about the 14th or 15th of February. Is that correct?

 

You say that you are going on holiday. How long will you be unavailable for?

[BankFodder]

It should be straightforward. Make sure that you use the correct company name and registered address in the UK. Use the particulars which I suggested in an earlier post – if you're happy with that. Don't bother to claim interest.

 

If you haven't heard from them on your return from holiday then you should probably just issue the papers.

 

Then make sure that you are on hand 14 days later to apply for judgement if they haven't put in an acknowledgement. If they don't acknowledge then apply for judgement the moment that the time limit expires. Don't hang around.

[BankFodder]

No, I don't think there is anything else you need to do. As long as you are aware that there is a risk that you might lose – very remote risk in my view – but always a risk and that you could lose your claim fee.

 

The possible losses are extremely low – and apart from anything else I would have thought that once the claim is issued and they realise what they have got that the SAR disclosure will arrive. It would be amazing wouldn't it, if they received a claim from you which they dealt with and yet still denied that you are who you say you are.

 

Be aware that if you do issue the claim, then they may decide to counterclaim for any outstanding sums. Personally I don't think there would be a bad thing. It would force everything out into the open and also it would mean that they would have spared you the hassle of having to bring your own claim for the money.

 

However, once you issue the claim, you will start having to pay attention to deadlines and knocking it back on time and not getting sidetracked

[BankFodder]

Excellent. That amounts to all but an admission.

 

It will be interesting to see their defence.

 

I suggest very strongly that even though they try to pay you out in order to withdraw the claim, that you insist on the judgement. It would at all surprise me if they start bidding you up. If they don't acknowledge the claim then watch out very carefully for day 15 when you can apply for the judgement. Then just go in and do it.

 

It's about time that Npower were brought to heel on this practice – and I'm very pleased that you appear to be doing it.

 

Of course they are still being stupid because they are clearly perfectly happy to send you threats and demands and bills to your normal contact address but when it comes to sending you an SAR, they want to send it to a special secure mechanism, give you only 60 days to retrieve it and also have a system which is not capable of supporting call recordings.

 

This just goes further to show that Npower are completely stupid and have no idea about how to treat their customers fairly and no idea how to manage their statutory obligations.

 

Just imagine the huge amount of money that they spend preparing for GDPR – and they haven't even got it right yet. If what they say is true, – and who knows – they haven't even managed to get proper staff development for all of their people so that customers' requests have been handled properly.

 

Whoever is their director in charge of their data protection function – and am quite sure that person is earning a shed load of money – it is clear that they are incompetent and frankly they deserve to be sacked.

 

 

This kind of thing should be properly handled – and it hasn't been.

 

Let's see how efficient they will suddenly become when they receive the claim.

[BankFodder]

Post 64 in this thread

[BankFodder]

Hmmm - get an Android

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid I think that you will have to go through them all fairly carefully – make notes – I suggest that you number the pages with a pen down at the bottom or something so that you can then refer to them.

Maybe the thing to do is put them all in some kind of ring binder or maybe a couple of ring binders. Number the pages by hand, then go through them once and make an index using an Excel spreadsheet of the titles and the dates of each document – together with with its number.

That will probably give you a fairly good overview of what you got and I'm sure that you will spot interesting anomalies on the way. However, don't get distracted by those – just make a note that you need to go back to them.

Once you've got the documents numbered, indexed, and a general overview of what you have – then you can start to go through and look at them more carefully. I suggest that if you find anything particularly interesting, you might even consider photocopying it so that you have a separate collection of specially interesting items – but you don't disturb your master file.

You want to look out for what is there – but you want also to try and see what is not there. What is not there might be more interesting than what is there. Apart from anything else, if you find there is stuff missing, then this will add to your case against Npower for their breach of the DPA.

Have fun!

[BankFodder]

What's happening on this please?

[BankFodder]

You've applied for the judgement? – When was this? Well done.

As soon as you have obtained a judgement – put the bailiffs in. Do immediately without any notice and without waiting. It will cost you 50 quid but it will be worth it for the satisfaction and you will get the money back anyway

[BankFodder]

As soon as you get the judgement, send them another letter of claim and tell them that their breach of statutory duty is continuing and you are proposing to issue a claim against them within 14 days.

[BankFodder]

Well unless they suddenly wake up, once the judgment is obtained, there is nothing to stop you going ahead.

Also send a copy of the judgment to the ICO as part of a complaint.

[BankFodder]

2 hours ago, David2Prit said:

 

 

NPOWER never responded, so have gone ahead and submitted the CCJ against them. 

 

Now on need to work out exactly the claim details for the next one. 

Would you be able to give advice?

In respect of the substantive claim, do you think that you got enough information to start dealing with that or do you need the statutory disclosure?

This thread has now run to 4 pages and it has been pretty well wholly occupied with the data protection problem. I think that when you come to start dealing with your substantive claim that it would be better to start a new thread and keep this one simply for the data disclosure issue.

 

I know that the whole process seems agonisingly slow – but I think you are better off being fully prepared and fully informed. Also, the more mistakes that Npower makes such as not honouring your disclosure request, the better it will look for you in the long run when you start to deal with the main issue.

 

[BankFodder]

As with all data disclosures you need to understand what might be missing in addition to discovering any useful information.

Presumably you had no word on the judgement yet?

In terms of dealing with the main problem, as I have already suggested I think the best thing to do is to start a new post and to lay out the story in a reasonably succinct chronological bullet pointed fashion

[BankFodder]

Do I take it that they are still in breach of the SAR request – or has that been resolved now?

[BankFodder]

Goodwill am glad that the disclosure was useful. Is there anyway that you can identify the missing calls. Did you ever keep logs of the calls that you made? (There is a very good practice for the future).

If you can set out the extent of their omissions from the data disclosure then if you want we can think about using that as the basis of a further action against them – simply to stir it up a bit. You have seen how easy it is.

[BankFodder]

I think that it wouldn't be worth starting a new claim about a data protection breach unless you had very clear evidence of what was missing. If you can find references in any of their notes or correspondence to telephone calls, records of which are missing from the disclosure – then that would give you a solid basis. Otherwise, it's probably not worth having another go.

Watch out for discrepancies and see if you can pick anything up.

[BankFodder]

Please could you post up the judgement here.

[BankFodder]

Okay it's a "forthwith" judgement. Put the bailiffs straightaway.

 

However, you better read this 

 

[BankFodder]

I'm afraid that you will have to look at the county court website to discover that. In fact when you find the appropriate place may be could post a link here.

However it should be fairly straightforward once you find the appropriate form. You should be searching on – county court enforcement – county court bailiffs. This is not to be confused with the ordinary private bailiffs. I think there is a £50 fee but you will eventually get that back. See what you can find out and come back

[BankFodder]

Unfortunately not – it would be so lovely if it was

 

https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/enforce-a-judgment

[BankFodder]

Well at least why don't you start laying out your story in a new thread and then we'll work our way through it and see what we feel

[BankFodder]

Sorry, why you posting this now? Have you issued a warrant? Or are you about to do it then?