Harassment by telephone - possible letter and citations

fermi

There are a lot of different response letters for harassment by telephone floating around. This is just one example:


Harassment by telephone

Your Street
Town
City
Postcode
DATE HERE

Company Name
Road
Town
City / County
Postcode



FORMAL COMPLAINT - HARASSMENT BY TELEPHONE.


Account Number: XXXXXXX

Dear Sirs,

I am writing in relation to the quantity and frequency of telephone calls that I have received from your company, which I deem to be harassment by yourselves.

I have verbally requested that these stop, but I am still receiving calls. (Delete if necessary)

I now require all further correspondence from your company to be made in (writing or email) only.

I am of the view that your continued harassment of me by telephone puts you in breach of The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

I draw your attention to the case of Roberts v Bank of Scotland plc and another [2013] All ER (D) 88 (Jun) in the Court of Appeal.

The court concluded that:

(1) The existence of a debt did not give a lender the right to bombard the debtor with calls. It was for the debtor to decide whether they wanted to discuss the matter with the creditor.

(2) In respect of the harassment appeal, the claimant had made it perfectly clear that she had not wanted to speak to the bank, and she had been perfectly entitled to do so. Once the bank had phoned a few times, it had been clear that no progress was to be made. Further calls had been futile and should have been stopped. The judge had been right to characterise the calls as intimidation and they had been wholly unjustified.

If you continue to harass me by telephone, you will also be in breach of the Communications Act (2003) s.127 and I will report you to OFCOM, Trading Standards and The Financial Conduct Authority, meaning that you will be liable to a substantial fine.

Please treat this also as a formal complaint under the procedures set out by the Financial Ombudsman (FOS). As such, you are required to send me a copy of your company complaints procedure.

Furthermore, please note that the FOS consider it 'unfair' for you to continue with phone calls when requested not to do so.

Also the FCA consider it an unfair practice for you to ignore my legitimate wishes on how to contact me, for example where the debtor requests contact only via written letter or email, so I now demand that you cease any phone calls forthwith.

*** If in a DMP ***

(It is also a breach of FCA rules to bypass my appointed representative and contact me directly. My representatives are StepChange, and your bypassing of them will be reported to the FCA. )

Be advised that any further telephone calls from your company will be recorded. (**Even if you don‘t yet have recording equipment!!**)

This issue is not negotiable. Any further phone calls will be logged, treated as harassment and reported to the authorities as such.

Yours faithfully,


(type don't sign)

Removal of numbers under Data Protection.

You also have a right to demand that all telephone numbers for you are removed from their system, including home/mobile ones.

See this post from CCCS:

CCCS_Emily wrote: »

Whether the account is with the original creditor or not if you request your telephone number to be removed from your account and request a creditor contacts you only by post they are obliged, by the Data Protection Act, to do so. You need to make this request in writing and send it special delivery mentioning that if they do not remove your number that they will be in breach of the DPA and you will report it to the Information Commissioner. If they do not do as you ask you can make a complaint to them, again mentioning the DPA and Information Commissioner, and if they still continue to call then report it.

Your creditors do need to have contact details for you, but an address is all they need. If they have anything important to tell you they need to do it in writing anyway, as do you to them. You need to know what is going on with your debt and who is collecting it at any given time, so the payments go to the right place.

So you may wish to add something like this to your letter:

FAO: Data Controller of (creditor/DCA) - Section 10 notice under the Data Protection Act 1998

I withdraw my consent (under s.10 of the DPA) for you to process my personal data with respect to my personal or work telephone numbers registered with you or stored on your systems/records.

The processing and use of these numbers is causing significant distress.

Advice from The Consumer Credit Counselling Service and the Information Commissioner indicates that your retention of contact details in the form of a correspondence address is sufficient to fulfil contractual obligations.

This request supersedes any contractual provision that you may claim exists, and any attempt to claim otherwise will not be accepted or tolerated.

Furthermore, any claim by you that my right to withdraw consent does not apply, and/or that your phone calls have not caused 'distress' applicable under this section, will be not be accepted.

I refer you to the cases of Harrison v Link Financial Ltd [2011] EWHC B3 and Roberts v Bank of Scotland plc and another [2013] All ER (D) 88

Any such attempt to evade your obligations will be immediately reported to the FCA and trading standards and will be the subject of a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Under the DPA you have 21 days to respond to this request, and 28 days to cease processing and/or remove the data from your systems. Future use of my telephone number will be recorded and will indicate a breach of my request under the DPA, this will result in a complaint being raised with the Information Commissioner.

You will be deemed to have been served notice of my request and I will deem it served by (FULL DATE), I am advising you that any calls received after this date will be recorded with the intention of them being used as evidence.

Furthermore, please note that the FOS consider it 'unfair' for you to continue with phone calls when requested not to do so.

Also the OFT consider it an unfair practice for you to ignore my legitimate wishes on how to contact me, for example where the debtor requests contact only via written letter or email, so I now demand that you cease any phone calls forthwith.


Yours faithfully,

Tixy

Bump......

Willing2Learn

imho, This and/or fermis thread should be stickied or merged with one of the other helpful threads at the top of the forum so will always be readily available without needing to be bumped.

fermi

Reference: 'Bullying' bank ordered to pay up for harassing customer: Know your rights

Judgment transcript ---> http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/882.html

Tixy

.bump.....

fermi

References update to FCA.