Virgin, mystery extra line: 2 judgments for Data Protection breaches - so far!!

[dx100uk]

the defendants solicitor if they are using one.

[lemon_martini2]

*does happy dance* Bundle all completed and sent off,with the help of the very useful webinar. Very glad to no longer have to deal with Adobe Acrobat-not easy to learn overnight. 

Have confined the documents I require to purely SAR requests and their replies(or lack thereof), their defence and the written offer from the executive team as everything else is irrelevant on this claim.

 

*after having gone to get mail, I have received a reply from Nicola Smith-apparently she wants the claim form, acknowledgment of service, allocation to small claims, DQ, transfer of proceedings and notice of hearing all to be included within my bundle too and resent out before the deadline...

 

[BankFodder]

It sounds as if she is deliberately trying to make life difficult for you.

 

Have you had their documents yet?

[lemon_martini2]

Nothing received so far.

 

[AndyOrch]

19 minutes ago, lemon_martini2 said:

Nothing received so far.

 

Waiting for yours before they commit themselves...what date are you directed to file and exchange ?

 

[lemon_martini2]

First exchange was 27/7- all they submitted for that was two statements from Beverly(on the Executive Team) and 'Sharon'-a call centre worker. This one is today by 4pm.

[AndyOrch]

Give them till say Tues and then inform the court they have failed to comply with the courts directions dated xxxxxx...the court can strike out the defence and award you judgment for none compliance of its own volition.

[BankFodder]

If you do make this request from the court that then point out that in any event, their defence predates your claim and also doesn't refer to the claim at all and is as if they were dealing with a completely different claim.

You should also point out the court that their lack of cooperation has caused unnecessary inconvenience to you and that you are a litigant in person and that you respectfully ask the court to exercise its discretion towards you litigant in person costs.

It will be worth preparing a spreadsheet of the amount of time and trouble you have taken on this so far. Give it modest but when you consider the research, the learning, the provision of documents the preparation of documents and the filing and serving, I think it will be reasonable for you to say to the court that as a litigant in person you have expended a great deal of time dealing with unknown territory – and you should probably think about claiming for 20 hours.

Have it itemised in a spreadsheet which would company the request of the court. Keep it reasonable and well justified – don't make it look like a money grab but make sure that it looks organised and not greedy.

I think that it will be worth having this spreadsheet – time and costs – prepared anyway and kept up-to-date because it might be reasonable to ask for litigant in person costs anyway seeing as Nicola is making such a pigs ear of this

[lemon_martini2]

We have hit a little snag-the hearing is due to take place tomorrow virtually and the court have not given me any details of how it will take place-the Zoom code or room name or anything like that. I have tried ringing them today but the phone has just rung off the hook until 3pm when a message tells me they are only answering calls between 10am and 3pm due to Covid. I've sent the court an email as well to inform them, to make sure that Virgin can't win by default just by turning up online and then claiming I failed to attend.

[BankFodder]

I suggest that you send an email to Virgin and tell them the problem and ask them if they will let you know so how they are proposing to attend the hearing.

 

Also telephone them repeatedly until you get the answer.

 

When you send emails to Virgin copy them to the court

Probably best to send repeated emails to Virgin and put them on notice that you simply don't have the details.

 

Send an email now and send one tomorrow morning early and then maybe 11 and then in the afternoon.

 

What time is the hearing scheduled for

 

 

[unclebulgaria67]

When you completed your information, did you not put your mobile contact details and they will call you at the time to invite you into the meeting via the application they are using.  It will give you temporary access as a guest and you don't need to have the software app pre installed.

 

But do as Bankfodder advises and make sure you have mobile switched on and be available.

[lemon_martini2]

It's 2pm tomorrow.

[BankFodder]

Well I don't have a good feeling about it.

 

I think you need to be making contact with them every half hour both by phone and by email so at the very least if you have to ask for a set aside you have got lots of evidence to show that you tried to reach out to them and the they declined to help you.

 

I think they have a responsibility to give you the information you need to take part in the hearing if you can only get in contact with the.

 

How long ago should you have received this information from the court?

It's certainly a a great shame that the court wasn't contacted at the beginning of the week or even last week to inform them that you didn't have the information you needed

 

 

 

 

[lemon_martini2]

Mobile will be on and I shall be emailing the court and Virgin tonight and tomorrow morning and as soon as court lines open at 10am I shall be calling them- I was calling constantly today but no-one was picking up. I was hoping that the court would have everything in order and have the details ready which is why I didn't panic at the beginning of the week when I hadn't heard anything.

[lemon_martini2]

OK here's where we've reached so far-Virgin apparently have not received the link yet either-according to their chat, the adjudicator will send the link to me and then to Virgin. 

The court has not replied to the emails and neither has Nicola and her crew. Virgin apparently has no way of contacting their legal team(!) and the person on the Executive Team who is dealing with this case is on annual leave until the 4th September. If no-one receives the link and turns up, then what is the procedure? 

Once 10am hits, I will call the court and make sure I get someone there who can answer exactly what is going on.

 

[lemon_martini2]

Well the fun continues. I have managed to get in touch with the courts-apparently the case had been vacated because the court had noted that the fee had not been paid or the help with fees exemption codes sent to them.

 

When the girl looked back over the in-case management system, she could see that they had in fact acknowledged receipt of the fees code, and since they couldn't have acknowledged receipt of something that hadn't been sent, she has admitted it was the court's error and the case will now be placed on the calendar again. We await a new time and place.

 

Odd that I didn't receive any communication about this either from the court or from Virgin, who continued to submit defences and bundles after the date it was struck out-I'd have expected them to have been in touch immediately to inform me of the fact that my case was withdrawn and they had won...

 

 

[BankFodder]

I suggest that you get all of this done in writing and send it it to Virgin and also to the courts so everybody is clear as to the understanding and how the understanding came about.

 

Always important to have a paper trail of everything.

 

it seems to me that either Virgin is run by the courts or else the courts are run by Virgin although which is which is not clear to me yet.

 

 

 

[lemon_martini2]

A new letter from Virgin Executive team regarding my complaint. 

They were unable to contact me about it on 20 August (the day of the postponed online hearing)

Their suggested resolution for the ongoing complaint that I have submitted is-...'to provide internal feedback' 

'We hope this works for you-if we don't hear back after 28 days,we'll assume you're satisfied with everything and close your complaint'.

Another letter to tell them this does not work for me for certain will be winging its way to them. What else should I do as the next step-inform the courts that Virgin are continuing to work on this complaint even after defending it as without merit?

 

 

[BankFodder]

this is all worth storing up as evidence of inaccurate data processing later on

[BankFodder]

Any update on this? This has gone very quiet for a long time now.

Maybe it's worth phoning the court and to find out what's going on. It wouldn't at all surprised me that with the last mistake, the whole file now has been lost or mistakenly filed under "complete".

[lemon_martini2]

Funny you should mention it-I have today got a letter from the court telling me the judge's comments

'there is no record of an email of 23 July 2021 with the Help With Fees application'

'the Help With Fees code was not generated until either 21 April 2021 or 18 August 2021 and so cannot have been included in an email sent on 23 July 2021'. 

'If you want to set aside the order of 2 Aug 2021(I assume that's the one that no-one vhas received,vacating the case) you must make an N244 application  and pay the fee of £255 or submit a Help With Fees application'.

 

They don't even know when the code was generated and have no idea whether this was before or after the email was sent to them...

 

 

[BankFodder]

Sorry but I don't understand this at all. I didn't realise that you made an application for assistance with fees. And I had no idea that this was ever raised as an issue before.
What on earth is going on?

Are you able to explain what this is all about?

[BankFodder]

Also, might it be worth starting to phone the court regularly to see what on earth is happening. It certainly seems to me that if they have made an error then it should be pointed out to them in writing so that there is a paper trail.

I'm also wondering whether it's getting time may be to send virgin another SAR even though this present matter is not settled.

[lemon_martini2]

At last I'm back online-computer battery was screwed up and couldn't access any information  

 

Application for fees online was submitted and in post #316 the court confirmed they had received it and so it had to have been submitted.

 

Court will be contacted again tomorrow-they appear to be only answering phones between 10 and 3 and then it's a struggle to get anyone to actually pick up and emails just get autoresponses.

 

I could crack on with another SAR although they might argue it's repetitive as they've already replied to it.

[BankFodder]

Well it wouldn't really be repetitive because some considerable time has passed since the last one and apart from anything else there must be more data – but maybe it will be worth simply biding our time on that one.

Maybe it will be worth writing a real letter and sending it for the attention of the district judge in the style of a "polite complaint".