Can Credit Checks be done without permission

donny84

Hello All,

Last year I created a Jacamo Account (J.D Williams) I was going to order some clothes, something came up so didn't finish putting my order through. When I went back to finish my order I saw they had given me 'Credit' which I did not request, I placed an order and used the credit they had given me, and never paid them back, they sent many nasty letters which I used to reply to saying, "if you can provide a copy of the credit agreement I signed I would pay" eventually they sent me the agreement but of course it was not signed by me, So I never paid eventually they gave up asking for the money.

Now, a few days ago I placed an order with PremierMan which I found out after was also J.D Williams, so today I checked my credit report and blow and behold they ran a credit check on me, This time they used their brains and didn't give me credit.
I have read every last bit of small print on their website and cannot find anything anywhere saying they will run a credit check, or that it would be a credit account. This evening I called them and gave them hell for running a check without permission, the woman I spoke to said they ran a check because I applied for a credit account, I said that was complete nonsense and there was nothing on the website saying it was a credit account. Eventually she got bored arguing with me and said she couldn't help but offered to get their credit department to call me back.

I am wondering if it is legal to run a credit check without permission or at least stating somewhere that they will? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance :-)

mattoo

This has happened to me before but with NEXT. They run a credit check and if you pass, they set you up a credit account otherwise the page forwards to a payment page for you to pay via credit card.

Nowhere on the site was this made clear and I felt it was very misleading. It was however, in there terms and conditions small print, which is so long, you just would not read it all before placing an order online.

So....I phoned the financial Ombudsman and logged my complaint as they ran a credit check etc and without explicitly telling me. I was only purchasiing £10 cufflinks!!

I got a letter and phone call only days later apologising profusely and they gave me the item free of charge and promised to make it clearer to customers.

So....my advice would be to have a good read of the T&C's on their site and give the financial ombudsman a ring and log your complaint. It is not on and they should be warning you that a credit check will take place before you order.

Forwandert

donny84 wrote: »

Hello All,

Last year I created a Jacamo Account (J.D Williams) I was going to order some clothes, something came up so didn't finish putting my order through. When I went back to finish my order I saw they had given me 'Credit' which I did not request, I placed an order and used the credit they had given me, and never paid them back, they sent many nasty letters which I used to reply to saying, "if you can provide a copy of the credit agreement I signed I would pay" eventually they sent me the agreement but of course it was not signed by me, So I never paid eventually they gave up asking for the money.

Now, a few days ago I placed an order with PremierMan which I found out after was also J.D Williams, so today I checked my credit report and blow and behold they ran a credit check on me, This time they used their brains and didn't give me credit.
I have read every last bit of small print on their website and cannot find anything anywhere saying they will run a credit check, or that it would be a credit account. This evening I called them and gave them hell for running a check without permission, the woman I spoke to said they ran a check because I applied for a credit account, I said that was complete nonsense and there was nothing on the website saying it was a credit account. Eventually she got bored arguing with me and said she couldn't help but offered to get their credit department to call me back.

I am wondering if it is legal to run a credit check without permission or at least stating somewhere that they will? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance :-)

Your Rights, Privacy and Data Protection

Click this and then "Registering for a new account" which expains about the credit accounts and how not to apply for one.

I don't think you really tried to find this information.

donny84

Forwandert wrote: »

Your Rights, Privacy and Data Protection

Click this and then "Registering for a new account" which expains about the credit accounts and how not to apply for one.

I don't think you really tried to find this information.

Nothing About Credit Accounts....

First Link You Provided...
'Your Rights, Privacy and Data Protection'

[B]Your Rights, Privacy and Data Protection[/B] 
 
  Data Protection 
  J.D. Williams & Company Limited trading as Premier Man ("We" and "Us"), will use your personal information to fulfil your order, process your payments, and administer your account. It may also be used by Us to send you further offers We think may be of interest to you. Provided you have already consented (by not ticking the opt-out box when you opened your Premier Man account) We may also share your personal data and other information, including your shopping habits, with our associated companies within the JD Williams Group of companies (“the Group”) and other third party organisations outside of the Group. We or they may contact you for marketing purposes by mail, telephone, email, sms/mms text message or otherwise. If you do not wish to be contacted by third party organisations outside the Group or wish to access the personal data we hold relating to you or you wish to exercise any of your other statutory rights under the Data Protection Act 1998, please contact the Data Protection Compliance Officer at Griffin House, 40 Lever Street, Manchester, M60 6ES. A fee of £10 is payable for each subject access request that you submit. Any statutory change in this fee will be advised to you at the point of application.  
 
  Safeguarding your Data 
  Your data is held by J.D. Williams & Company Limited on secure systems which employ 168 bit triple DES SSL encryption (with a minimum of 128 bit triple DES for browsers which do not support 168). This data is held in a secure building with restricted access and protected with mainframe security software. This is designed to ensure that your data is accessed by only those people who need to access it for lawful purposes and that your data is safeguarded against accidental destruction or damage and unauthorised or unlawful processing.  
  Information about your use of this website 
  This website uses "cookies" to allow us to understand how customers use the site. This helps us to learn more about how frequently particular pages are visited and to determine the most popular areas of our website which will then help us to improve your shopping experience.  
 
  What are Cookies? 
  A cookie is a small file that can be stored by your browser on your computer's hard drive. They allow a website to recognise users when they return to a site. Cookies do not compromise your privacy.  
 
  How do you use Cookies? 
  We use cookies to monitor usage of this website. We also use cookies to help us to target our marketing and to personalise your visit to our website and make it more user-friendly, for example by allowing us to save your password so that you do not have to re-enter it every time. We use two companies called Coremetrics and Speed-Trap to gather certain information about how you browse and search and buy from the site. To do this we place cookies on your computer that collect information on our behalf, we use this information to constantly improve our services and your shopping experience. Passwords and credit card information are not collected by the Coremetrics and Speed-Trap systems. Coremetrics and Speed-Trap are used to analyse the data collected, which is then passed back to us via a secure connection. Our contract with Coremetrics and Speed-Trap prohibits them from using any of the data themselves.  
 
  What information is contained in Cookies? 
  A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers downloaded on to your computer when you access certain websites. Cookies collect standard Internet log information and visitor behaviour in an anonymous form. We will not use cookies to track or to collect any personally identifiable information about you.  
 
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You can opt out from having your data collected by Coremetrics by clicking here. You can opt out from having your data collected by Speed-Trap by clicking here.  
 
  Protecting your Interests 
  We subscribe to the Code of Practice established by The Mail Order Traders' Association in consultation with the Office of Fair Trading. We undertake to deal with any complaints speedily and sympathetically. If any complaint cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of the customer we or you may refer the problem for conciliation by: The Director, The Mail Order Traders Association, PO Box 51909, London, SW99 0WZ. We are members of the Mailing Preference Service and the Telephone Preference Service. For staff training purposes we may occasionally record customers telephone calls.  
 
 
 
  Price policy and Availability  
  Every item is described as accurately as possible and represents excellent value for money. While we make every effort to ensure that all prices and descriptions on our website are accurate, errors may occur. If we discover such an error after you have submitted an order to us, we will contact you prior to accepting your order with the correct details and offer you the opportunity to either re-confirm or cancel your order. If we are unable to contact you we may treat the order as cancelled. The correct price will be confirmed to you in the advice note enclosed with the goods on delivery. If the correct price shown on your advice note is higher than the price displayed on the website at the time you placed your order, you may of course cancel the order and return the goods within our home approval policy.
The goods and services featured on this website are only available to persons resident in the UK and J D Williams will not accept orders from outside the UK.
All products and services are subject to availability and may be withdrawn at any time. All orders are accepted on the condition that English Law and the exclusive jurisdiction of the English Courts applies to all such accepted orders. All orders are subject to our acceptance. When you submit an order via our website you will immediately receive a confirmatory e-mail as an acknowledgment of your order. This e-mail does not constitute acceptance of the order by us. Acceptance of your order and the formation of the contract between you and us will take place when we dispatch the goods to you.  
 
  Important notice about knives 
  It is against the law to sell to people under 18 years of age, knives and certain other articles with a blade or point made or adapted for causing injury. These products cannot be purchased by any person under 18 years of age.  
 
  Further Information 
  Calls may be monitored and recorded for training or quality purposes.  
 
  Contacting us 
  If you need to contact us, for any reason or to make a formal complaint you can do so by the following means:
By Post To: Premier Man, Customer Contact Centre, 23 Hunts Bank, Manchester. M3 1AX
By Telephone To: 0871 231 2000 (Calls cost 10p per minute from BT landlines but will vary depending on your phone company or if using a mobile) 
Online: See our Contact Us section.
 
 
  Our Registered Address: 
  J D Williams & Company Limited t/as Premier Man. Registered Office: Griffin House, 40 Lever Street, Manchester, M60 6ES.. Registered in England No 178367. VAT Number: 148879603
Premier Man is a trademark of J.D. Williams & Company Limited.  
  YOU MAY PRINT OUT AND KEEP A PERMANENT COPY OF THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR YOUR REFERENCE BY CLICKING HERE  

Second Link You Gave
Under 'Registering for a New Account'

[B]Registering for a new account[/B]
 
If you are new to shopping with Premier Man, then you will need to set up an account with us. You can use this account each time you place an order, which will mean you only ever have to enter your details once, and you can view a history of your transactions with us. 
 
The registration process asks you to first enter your address, which must be a valid address according to the Post Office files. Occasionally the system has trouble recognising new addresses or business addresses. We also regret that the website cannot register BFPO addresses. If you have difficulty at this point in registering please do not hesitate to [B][COLOR=#000066]contact us[/COLOR][/B] so that a Customer Service advisor can set up the account for you. 
 
After entering your address, you will be asked for details such as your name, date of birth and email address. At this point, you will also enter a password which will allow you to quickly sign in to the website on future visits.
 
You will be sent two separate emails confirming your account number and password 

shaun_from_Africa

Donny,
I found this bit of info in the "registering for a new account" link.

After entering your address, you will be asked for details such as your name, date of birth and email address. At this point, you will also enter a password which will allow you to quickly sign in to the website on future visits.
You should read the Terms & Conditions of the account before clicking ‘Accept’ or ‘Decline’ to indicate whether you are happy to continue setting up a credit account. If you would prefer not to have a credit account as you are happy to pay in full by credit or debit card at the time of each order, then you should click decline at this point in the process. You will then be offered the opportunity to set up a non-credit account.

Unless you make sure that you tick the decline box, then a credit account will be set up automatically.

donny84

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

Donny,
I found this bit of info in the "registering for a new account" link.



Unless you make sure that you tick the decline box, then a credit account will be set up automatically.

That's so strange I don't get that on my pc... Will put up a screenshot in the morning, I'm in bed now lol

Forwandert

donny84 wrote: »

Nothing About Credit Accounts....

First Link You Provided...
'Your Rights, Privacy and Data Protection'

Ok not quite there still are you.. the first link i gave, the very first information on the page says they will do a credit check..

Data Protection We will make searches about you at credit reference agencies who will supply us with credit information, as well as information from the Electoral Register. The agencies will record details of the search whether or not credit is granted.

donny84 wrote: »

Second Link You Gave
Under 'Registering for a New Account'

For some reason and i'm not saying you did this on purpose, the only thing you didn't copy and paste from the information on the second link was this.

After entering your address, you will be asked for details such as your name, date of birth and email address. At this point, you will also enter a password which will allow you to quickly sign in to the website on future visits.
You should read the Terms & Conditions of the account before clicking ‘Accept’ or ‘Decline’ to indicate whether you are happy to continue setting up a credit account. If you would prefer not to have a credit account as you are happy to pay in full by credit or debit card at the time of each order, then you should click decline at this point in the process. You will then be offered the opportunity to set up a non-credit account.
For both types of account, you will be sent two separate emails confirming your account number and password.

Both the credit searches and how to open a non credit account are both there, basically you should read the terms and conditions before you press accept..

wealdroam

Forwandert wrote: »

Your Rights, Privacy and Data Protection

Click this and then "Registering for a new account" which expains about the credit accounts and how not to apply for one.

I don't think you really tried to find this information.

Donny, you are dreaming.
From the first link ( Your Rights, Privacy and Data Protection)...

Data Protection
We will make searches about you at credit reference agencies who will supply us with credit information, as well as information from the Electoral Register.
etc. etc.

stclair

donny84 wrote: »

Hello All,

Last year I created a Jacamo Account (J.D Williams) I was going to order some clothes, something came up so didn't finish putting my order through. When I went back to finish my order I saw they had given me 'Credit' which I did not request, I placed an order and used the credit they had given me, and never paid them back, they sent many nasty letters which I used to reply to saying, "if you can provide a copy of the credit agreement I signed I would pay" eventually they sent me the agreement but of course it was not signed by me, So I never paid eventually they gave up asking for the money.

Now, a few days ago I placed an order with PremierMan which I found out after was also J.D Williams, so today I checked my credit report and blow and behold they ran a credit check on me, This time they used their brains and didn't give me credit.
I have read every last bit of small print on their website and cannot find anything anywhere saying they will run a credit check, or that it would be a credit account. This evening I called them and gave them hell for running a check without permission, the woman I spoke to said they ran a check because I applied for a credit account, I said that was complete nonsense and there was nothing on the website saying it was a credit account. Eventually she got bored arguing with me and said she couldn't help but offered to get their credit department to call me back.

I am wondering if it is legal to run a credit check without permission or at least stating somewhere that they will? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance :-)

It states in the terms and conditions you will be credit checked its your responsibility to ensure you read them before you accept anything. So they havent done anything wrong to be honest.

Forwandert

One other thing since you mention in the OP about not paying them last time is this.

This information may also be used for debt tracing and the prevention of money laundering as well as the management of your account and also for our marketing. We may also use your information, including shopping habits, to open and run your credit account including payment recovery, fraud prevention and debtor tracing and for our marketing.

donny84

Well I appreciate everyone saying it's 1st Line of t&c but that's not what shows on mine! I even printed it, what browsers are you using? I'm on internet explorer (latest version)

What I pasted in my post is what it says on my screen...