Barclay Card only keeps 3 years records

bellymonster · 1 June 2006 at 10:32AM

Just phoned Barclaycard to find out how many times they charged me for late payment. The operator told me they only keep 3 years records and couldn't tell me if I had been charged before that time. He was also very vague about the one charge I did have in the last 3 years. He couldn't give me an exact date just that it was about 31 months ago.

He also said (which made me laugh) that their records weren't very good 3 years ago, and sort of implied that computers were a new invention that they had just started to use !!

Have I just been Bulls**ted to ? Should I bother with trying to reclaim a poultry £20 ?

bert&ernie · 1 June 2006 at 5:25PM

I'm pretty sure they are obliged to keep records for 6 or 7 years. That said, the records are probably archived and not available online. When you ask for data from a financial institution, they will probably try to deal with your request informally i.e. fob you off with whatever data they can extract quickly and cheaply. They will try to put you off making a formal request under the data protection act, as this would involve significant cost to the company - far more then the £10 fee they are entitled to charge. Go back to them and threaten to make a subject access request under the DPA. It would be much cheaper for them to give you what you have asked for on an informal basis that to have to find ALL your personal data for an official request.