Vanquis... Is this legal?

APH1984

OK, I was late on a payment on my Vanquis credit card, they kept phoning etc... I finally paid the whole amount owed plus my over limit etc... About a week later, my Mum and Dad received a letter to their house (which I do not live at and have not lived at for about 5 years). Obviously, my Dad sees a letter addressed to Mr H... and opens it. It was an URGENT ACTION REQUIRED letter from Vanquis. Obviously my Dad knew that he hadn't got a card with them and that is when he noticed it was addressed to Mr APH1984 and not him.

I have NEVER given Vanquis my parents address/phone number etc... How did they find their address? And surely this is a breach of confidentiality? How can they send a letter addressed for me to a house that I don't live at?

I'm VERY unhappy about this, especially seeing as I had actually paid the amount being asked for more than a week earlier than this letter arrived. :mad::mad:

Armengar

Are you on the electoral role at that house?

peachyprice

They will have got the address from your credit files. Linked addresses stay on there for 6-8 years.

Innocent_Guy

Linked address

TheEffect

I got it wrong then. It's not legal.

never-in-doubt

TheEffect wrote: »

Linked address and yes, it's legal.

Its not legal for them to write to an alternative address unless they have performed industry standard 'gone away' searches which takes months of no communication. They cannot simply write to alternative addresses to the main account without good reason - its highly illegal and a major breach of DPA. I;m sure if you want to write in to their data controller and issue a SAR request they may start to panic......

Usual practice will state that gone away doesn;t apply until 6mth of no communication. They then start official gone away proceedings (tracing agencies/hunter etc) and if no joy then and only then can they apply to use linked addresses. The reason this is protected is for various reasons none more so the classic ex partner scenario - i.e. wife beater hubby gets ditched by his mrs who then moves away from the area and low-and-behold the ex turns up at her door and kills her. why? cos vanquis decided to contact him...... see the problem with this scenario?

sgt.tibbs1977

I am presuming that Vanquis have your address already and have no reason to start sending letters to linked addresses on your credit file so personally I would start the complaints process rolling, as per the Financial Ombudsman Service website, and ask for compensation for the breach of confidentiallity and distress caused.

ylesia

TheEffect wrote: »

Linked address and yes, it's legal.

I don't know the legalities of it but common sense tells me that they can't just write to a linked address for a missed payment.

I have two linked addresses on my file, both flats that I bought and then sold. The people who live there have nothing to do with me, if a credit card company wrote to their address I would be livid!

never-in-doubt

ylesia wrote: »

I don't know the legalities of it but common sense tells me that they can't just write to a linked address for a missed payment.

I have two linked addresses on my file, both flats that I bought and then sold. The people who live there have nothing to do with me, if a credit card company wrote to their address I would be livid!

quite rightly too, they have no legal provision to do this until the gone away process has been exhausted and even then - not entirely lawful either (breaches DPA in several ways)........