NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS request

[Stevlynd]

Have received a letter today from NatWest (copy below) & they have upheld my complaint re failure to comply fully with my SARs request. What does that actually mean as they have just listed excuses as to why they aren't able to give the information. I find their answer unbelievable, surely they should be logging phone calls emails etc on my record. Can what they are saying be correct?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.


SUBJECT ACCESS REQUEST – DATA PROTECTION ACT 1998 (SECTION 7)





Thank you for your patience whilst I have been investigating your recent complaint. I have now completed my investigation and am in a position to respond to your concerns.


When the items are presented for payment and covering funds are not available, manual intervention does not normally take place. However, if it does, it is part of a routine procedure and we are not required to make any record of the action that was adopted. Therefore, no notes relating to manual intervention would exist.


If you would like transcripts of telephone conversations, please provide us with dates, times and who you spoke to (i.e. departments or telephone number), so that we are able to locate these. Please note that not every telephone call is recorded. I apologise you were not advised of this before as these specific details are necessary to try to locate these calls.


Emails within our system are not searchable unless the customer’s full name is available in the header of the communication. Emails that can be located would have been included in your Subject Access Request.


I apologise that we have not responded to these queries in our previous correspondence, due to this I uphold your complaint. I can assure we have made every attempt to locate all information held. If there is other information you believe that has not been included please let us know and we will attempt to locate it.


I am sorry you found it necessary to make this complaint. If you think I have misunderstood anything about your complaint, or you would just find it helpful to talk through my response, please feel free to contact me on my direct line which is xxxxxxxxxxx


However if you are not satisfied with the outcome of this complaint you can refer this matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) for their view. If you wish to take your complaint to the FOS, you must do it within 6 months of the date of this letter i.e. before November 2013.

[labman]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

It is normal practice to have screen notes for every customer where this sort of information is recorded, so even if the call was not recorded, there should be a record of it.

I would be inclined to write back and tell them this, or report them to the ICO.

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

It is normal practice to have screen notes for every customer where this sort of information is recorded, so even if the call was not recorded, there should be a record of it.

I would be inclined to write back and tell them this, or report them to the ICO.

Thanks for your reply Labman, have spoken to the ICO & they didn't seem to think they could make them find the telephone calls although I wil add your suggestion to my reply thank you.

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

Forgot to say got another letter a few days later offering me £25.00 compensation. Needless to say I will be declining that.

[FlamingParrot]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

Satan's Den paid £50 into my account after their initial reply to my SAR consisted of 6 MONTHS worth of statements and a letter saying if I wanted any more, I'd have to pay another £10!!! :rant:

They eventually supplied 6 years worth of statements and screen prints, which was good enough for my purpose, but it was 6 months after my original SAR.

[leclerc]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

It is normal practice to have screen notes for every customer where this sort of information is recorded, so even if the call was not recorded, there should be a record of it.

I would be inclined to write back and tell them this, or report them to the ICO.

that's not always the case on a business account or even on a personal account. There maybe effectively a record that the account was accessed and by whom because they would have to identify the person that they were speaking to but there is no need for every single telephone call to be noted down on an account.

[leclerc]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

Forgot to say got another letter a few days later offering me £25.00 compensation. Needless to say I will be declining that.

How much would you accept considering that they are accepting the fact that they were wrong and that they are offering a monetary amount?


EDIT TO POST: I am asking this so that I know what you are expecting so that I can tell you what would be classed as fair by the FOS rather than any other reason. Sometimes, people assume that for a failure to produce a SAR £25k is reasonable(i picked that figure out of the air, btw) which clearly it is not.

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

How much would you accept considering that they are accepting the fact that they were wrong and that they are offering a monetary amount?


EDIT TO POST: I am asking this so that I know what you are expecting so that I can tell you what would be classed as fair by the FOS rather than any other reason. Sometimes, people assume that for a failure to produce a SAR £25k is reasonable(i picked that figure out of the air, btw) which clearly it is not.

To be honest leclerc I would be happy if we could just sit round a table & talk as the journey to me needing to do the SARs request is just too unbelievable. What's happened will cost me at least £400,000 & it could be easily rectified at no cost to the bank. All they would have to do is be reasonable.

[Streetwise]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

To be honest leclerc I would be happy if we could just sit round a table & talk as the journey to me needing to do the SARs request is just too unbelievable. What's happened will cost me at least £400,000 & it could be easily rectified at no cost to the bank. All they would have to do is be reasonable.

The bank don't do reasonable they are programed to get the money back at all cost,even as these bank employees are loosing there jobs they will still fight you tooth and nail,it's when they get made redundant that they start to understand what they have been part off,they think screwing you will save there jobs but they are just pawns for upstairs.

If you try to be reasonable with them they will see it as a weakness,I hope that you have taken back control of your properties and are putting any surplus monies aside to pay the bank,or use it as a fighting fund for your defence.

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

I sent letters to all tenants a couple of weeks ago reminding them their tenancy agreement is with my company not the receivers & giving them a date next week by which they must have paid their arrears or show evidence of having paid so i could write to the bank & tell them to take it off my ballance. 1 of them informed the receivers & i got an email with a letter attached back. The letter said amongst other things that, I had until last Tuesday to retract everything I had written to the tenants & tell them to pay the receivers.
Below are the emails to & from since then.

Thank you for your email dated 22nd May 2013. As you can appreciate with it being bank holiday weekend it has made things run a little more slowly than usual so there has been a delay in obtaining legal advice regarding your requests. In the meantime could I draw your attention to what you stated as being enclosed with your email, official copies of the title. Could you kindly forward these as it would help enormously with my reply.
Could you also confirm who your client is i.e. the bank or the receivers?
I look forward in the first instance to your acknowledgement of this email.
Regards




Dear Madam (me)

Thank you for your e-mail.

Official copies of the title for Xxxxxxxxxxx attached.

We will extend the deadline for responding to our letter of 22 May 2013 until 4pm this Friday.

We act for both the Bank and the appointed receivers.

Yours faithfully




Hi Xxxxx thank you for your prompt reply. Unfortunately the content of the attachment is as follows.
"The electronic official copy of the register follows this message. Please note that this is the only official copy we will issue. We will not issue a paper official copy."
As the original email from your colleague Xxxxxxx. stated copies enclosed I assumed that would be for all the properties. Have I misunderstood?
Thank you for confirming that you act for both the Bank & the Receivers.


Kind Regards


Dear Xxxxxx(me)



We have only sent you the official copy of the title for xxxxxxxxxx as you referred to this being owned by your company.


We can however send you copies of the other titles charged to the Bank that demonstrate that the properties are owned by you personally if you would like?


Yours faithfully


Hi xxxxxx thanks for getting back to me, but I am a little confused. Could you tell me when I said my company said it owned xxxxxxxxxxas I don't remember ever having said that?
Re the official copies which had been referred to in the email from your colleague Mary-Jane as "copies" and as she had also mentioned "properties" I had assumed it meant all properties.
No need to send any other copies as I think I would probably prefer to get more up to date copies myself but thanks for the offer anyway.
Kind regards

what I actually said was their tenancy agreement was with my company. If they are unsure as to the ownership of ........ then a simple land registry search would confirm the property is in my name. I advised them I would reimburse the £3.00.
The solicitors letter made it quite clear I was not the owner I was the registered proprietor. I had a look on the land registry & it says the registered proprietor is the owner. I am a little confused. Anyway 4pm is looming.

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

My 1st bank manager left because he hated the place. The 3rd told us he was getting out while could. That says it all really.

I have read a post on another forum from a couple of years ago by a tenant who's landlord was trying to take his properties back & the overwhelming advice was don't pay the landlord, On another more recent one the tenant was told to pay the landlord not the receivers. CONFUSED
The tenants have been sent a letter by the receivers/banks solicitors which states
"We understand you have been contacted by the registered proprietor of the property who is attempting to collect rents from you that are now due and payable to the receivers of the property."

"for the avoidance of any doubt all rent should be paid directly to the receivers to ensure a valid discharge of your obligation to pay rent under your tenancy agreement, lease or otherwise. If you do not pay your rent to the receivers we will have no option other than to peruse you for payment, this applies even if you have paid rent to the registered proprietor(s) of the property."

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

They can't put anything into my account as they emptied it of a few thousand pounds & then made it so normal bank staff can't identify it.

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

Satan's Den paid £50 into my account after their initial reply to my SAR consisted of 6 MONTHS worth of statements and a letter saying if I wanted any more, I'd have to pay another £10!!! :rant:

They eventually supplied 6 years worth of statements and screen prints, which was good enough for my purpose, but it was 6 months after my original SAR.

They can't put anything into my account as they emptied it of a few thousand pounds & then made it so normal bank staff can't identify it.

[leclerc]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

They can't put anything into my account as they emptied it of a few thousand pounds & then made it so normal bank staff can't identify it.

Ermmm, that god when I worked in the branch network("normal bank staff") I must have had a magic wand cos I could and did find needles in haystacks....... .

In terms of the issue of financial compensation for failure to provide data under a SAR then clearly they were stating that they were at fault so what you might want to do is quantify how much of your time has been wasted and furthermore what you had to do, ie phone calls, branch visits etc etc and merely state that £25.00 does not compensate you for the time and inconvenience of having to sort out the problem(might be worth mentioning names of people you spoke with/wrote to and received response prior to it being resolved and date being sent ).

I'd probably suggest £250(see if they are willing to barter down to £100 ).

[Stevlynd]

Re: NatWest have upheld my complaint re their failure o comply fully with my SARS req

Ermmm, that god when I worked in the branch network("normal bank staff") I must have had a magic wand cos I could and did find needles in haystacks....... .

In terms of the issue of financial compensation for failure to provide data under a SAR then clearly they were stating that they were at fault so what you might want to do is quantify how much of your time has been wasted and furthermore what you had to do, ie phone calls, branch visits etc etc and merely state that £25.00 does not compensate you for the time and inconvenience of having to sort out the problem(might be worth mentioning names of people you spoke with/wrote to and received response prior to it being resolved and date being sent ).

I'd probably suggest £250(see if they are willing to barter down to £100 ).

£100,000 wouldn't even cover it Leclerc. I have spent 3 or 4 hours a day for months reading & writing emails & letters that they don't even read. The information they have omitted is the information I need to fight them in court. Its not for PPI it's for my livelihood. That's why I would rather my compensation be to sit round a table & have them listen to me & act fairly as their own guidelines say they will.