CB's Wife Vs GE Money - Advice please

[Curlyben]

OK here's the sp on this one.

The wife had a Debenhams account from GE Captial.

She stopped paying on it and it was sold to our friends at Wescot.

So she been paying the balance off for a few years now, but feel pregnant with our first so her income dried up.

Wescot kind of forgot sbout her untill a couple of months ago.

 

So we CCA them and they produced the instore application form, I'll be dealing with that issue later.

The good thing they did was give us the original account number.

Off goes the SAR to GE Money with £10 as normal. I adjusted the SAR to ask for ALL information not just 6 years.

They happily banked the cheque and send us this letter:

 

Thank you for your letter of Blah.

This account was written off and sold to external collection agent in December 2001 and as such I am only able to provide copy statements going back to October 2001.

These will be sent under seperate cover and you should receive these within the next 10 days.

Should you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Yours

David Cunningham

 

Now I haven't seen the statements yet, but does this sound right.

Would GE of destroyed the previous history so quickly.

I thought that history had to be kept for at least 6 years.

 

Any advice would be great.

[steven4064]

I would write and remind them that under the DPA they have to supply all information they hold on you. Say you will make a claim through the county court and make a complaint about them to the information commisioner if they don't reply to your satisfaction with (the original) 40 days.

 

See the template for DPA non-compliance in the templates section.

[lyns]

I had a similar scenario where they said they didnt keep records for this amount of time! It was only a couple of years ago! Report them to the ICO like I did. It is all tactics, to try and confuse and stop you going ahead with your claim, keep going!

[steven4064]

what lyns said

[Curlyben]

Arived in the post this morning copy "statements".

What a complete steaming pile they are as well.

 

My wife remembers that the limit was £1,000, but the "statements" says £1,300 !

The APR is down as 0.0%, yeah right, from the application form its around 29% !!

On the 4 months I received there is ONE late payment charge and nothing else. Bear in mind that ZERO payments where made !!!

 

What are these people playing at ?

I was under the impression that they were ment to act in a lawful manner , not like this.

 

I feel an LBA for SAR compliance coming in and then a firm letter to the ICO.

[Curlyben]

Time for a strongly worded LBA non-compliance of DPA.

Now how can I say that they are telling complete pork pies with these "satements" ??

They really are a serious joke.

[steven4064]

I think you have to bite your tongue and just say they haven't complied with your DPA request as in the template.

[Curlyben]

Steven, agreed least one side can act professionally.

[Curlyben]

Right then I'm thinking of sending this, although I'd like to make it alot stronger.

 

Data Protection Act 1998 Subject Access Request

LETTER BEFORE ACTION

Section 7 – Data Protection Act 1998

 

Dear Sir/Madam

 

ACCOUNT NUMBER: XXX XXX XXX

 

 

I am in receipt of the documents that you have supplied in response to my Data Protection Act information request dated 10th April 2007. The disclosure of personal data is wholly inadequate in that at least the following documents are missing.

 

1) You have failed to provide a complete list of transactions and charges for the entire life of the account.

2) You have provided no notes, or documents relating to instances of manual intervention.

 

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, it is just an example of some of the information I am missing.

 

Accordingly, I have to tell you that you have not yet complied with your obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998.

Failure to comply with my request will result in application to the County Court for an order to enforce compliance, together with damages at the discretion of the court.

Also reports being sent to the Information Commission, Financial Services Ombudsman and Trading Standards.

 

You have until 22nd May 2007 to comply.

 

Yours faithfully,

 

 

 

Blah

 

 

 

So any ideas how I can say they are telling untruths ?

[steven4064]

Looks good to me. I'm sure its right to keep it professional. They can be in no doubt that you mean business.

 

Steven

[rory32]

You may want to have a look here Search results and its the incorrect info leaflet. So section 12A of the Act.

[steven4064]

rory32

 

The information request with which GE Money have not fuuly complied was made under section 7. Section 12A gives the data subject (in this case CB's wife) the right to "to require the data controller to rectify, block, erase or destroy exempt manual data which are inaccurate or incomplete, or to require the data controller to cease holding exempt manual data in a way incompatible with the legitimate purposes pursued by the data controller"

 

I think s7 is the appropriate one here. The leaflet you refer to is helpful though.

 

Steven

[rory32]

Yeah Steven the original request was made under sections 7, 8 & 9 of the Act. My point was purely that the info they've supplied is wrong, so the info they hold on you may be wrong. That's why I refered to section 12A - sorry if I muddied the waters.

[Curlyben]

Rory, thanks for the link, excellent reading.

Unfortunatly in this case the information isn't wrong or incorrect, but complete and utter BS.

[Curlyben]

Right repeated SAR received and signed for 01/05, time to wait as their clock is still ticking.

 

Can't wait to see their response to the utter lack of correct information, should be interesting.

[lyns]

They were real snotty in my reply! In the end I had to estimate my charges on the missing ones as they just didnt send them, if they cant find them like they say then you can claim for what you like! As they have no proof to the contrary.

[Curlyben]

Well in that case they are completely knackered.

I know that the original limit was 500, but it was increased to 1000 when the card was upgraded.

They are claiming that the new limit was 1300 (untrue) with ZERO APR (also untrue).

Hey I have a copy of the original app form, sent by Wescot in response to my CCA.

 

So am I justified in caliming charges from the original limit as I have document proof on that ?

[Curlyben]

Still all quiet from the nice people at GE.

Time to draft a "What the hell do you think you're doing" letter

[rory32]

From dealing with GE a don't think "thinking" is their strongest suit Let us know how you get on.

[Curlyben]

Well time's up for these "People", time for a non-com letter and 7 days.

Next move will be Information Commissioners Office as I'm in no rush with this one.

 

Should I also go for FO, TS, etc ??

[steven4064]

Next move will be Information Commissioners Office as I'm in no rush with this one.

 

Should I also go for FO, TS, etc ??

 

Did you ever get a proper response to your CCA request? If not you should go to TS. It might be worth telling the FO that GE are not complying with basic legislation governing their activities, ie Data Protection Act and CCA, and asking whatthey are going to do about it.

 

Steven

 

ps when you think about it, it's a bit daft that there are (at least) 3 diffenent bodies that control differernt aspects of this industry - perhaps that is why the banks have been getting away with it.

 

 

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[Curlyben]

Nope the only thing we got for CCA was the original instore application form.

Admittedly I haven't CCA'd GE yet, but I think that will be my next route so they can dig themselves a REALLY deep hole

[Curlyben]

Now an interesting development.

Received a letter from Wescot concerning this "debt".

Basically they have passed it back to their clients, in this case Aktiv Krapital.

So the games start again.

 

Now I'm wondering if they have seen the information that GE have sent us and realised that this "debt" is going to be a fight, rather than their normal Roll Over and Play Dead routine.

 

So I'm really in no rush now, so when GE come back to me and say they can't find any further information I'l pass this on to the ICO for them to deal with.

[Curlyben]

So received a letter from GE re my S.A.R - (Subject Access Request):

Dear Mrs CB,

Thank you for your letter dated 27th April2007, regarding your DSAR. I am sorry for the delay in responding.

 

GE money retains records of customer transactions for FIVE years. We believe that by doing this we are complying with our obligations under the Data Protection Act and current anti-money laundering legislation.

 

Please be aware that your account was sold to an external collection agent in December 2001. We are, therefore only required to provide information from April to December 2001.

 

Unfortunately after extensive enquires, on our retrieval system, we have been experiencing problems attaining a small number of statements. I regrat that your statements from April to October 2001 are unavailable.

 

Please be aware that under your S.A.R - (Subject Access Request), GE money is only bound to provide you with information that we hold, which we have done. It is therefore GE money's position that it has complied with your SAR.

Should you require anu further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

 

Your Blah

Now I believe that GE have seriously shot themselves in the foot with this.

 

All they have supplied is a couple of pages with a blanace amount on them.

NO apr, payment terms, credit limit or anything.

The DCA it was assigned to have given up and gone home after my CCA, so....

 

Game Over I think.

 

I was quite enjoying myself there for a minute.

 

I suppose another DCA will surface eventually, hey I can wait.

[steven4064]

we have been experiencing problems attaining a small number of statements.

Slightly thingy with the wotsit, I think! If you look at the threads concerning GE Money on CAG, virtually every one has statements missing.

 

Steven

 

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