breach of data protection by halifax

lianaf81

Not all of it as been advice its been critisism

pmduk

The ICO rarely, if ever, acts on a single complaint. Accept the money you've been offered and move on.

BaxUk

lianaf81 wrote: »

Not all of it as been advice its been critisism

Because your responses to the advice warranted criticism.

JuicyJesus

In organisations as large and overall unwieldy as banks, mistakes will be made, as they will be in all organisations. It is an inevitability. More moving parts means more points of failure.

The FOS is not what you appear to think it is. The FOS has no power to fine or punish businesses; they are an arbitrator, a fresh pair of eyes for a complaint, not a regulator. A referral of your complaint to them will most likely get you just a reply back saying Halifax's offer of compensation is reasonable. Or they may come back saying they do not think an offer of any compensation at all is reasonable. There is a slim chance they may think more is justified, but I would doubt it - £250 per person is about in the range that FOS would consider for this type of complaint, and it appears you have not actually incurred any financial loss. See here for examples of amounts the FOS would suggest as guidelines for distress and inconvenience.

You can report it to the ICO and/or the FCA, but they will not be very likely to take any action specifically on your complaint, for the reasons I've cited above; pragmatically, if they launched enforcement action against an organisation as large as Halifax (or any other bank, or any other company) every time one of their employees c*cked up, bearing in mind what I said above about moving parts, they would do little else. Additionally Halifax would be able to evidence that they have procedures and controls in place to prevent, as far as is reasonably possible (again, moving parts) any sort of DPA breach. If they did not have those, and/or they were behaving recklessly, enforcement action would be very likely.

I'm sorry to say that, in my opinion only, £250 is pretty much all you are going to get. FOS may, with a very slim chance, order you to be compensated more, but it will take months for you to get to that point - FOS has a near-permanent backlog of complaints, and in my view they would just endorse Halifax's offer.

matttye

Take the money, accept their apology and take your custom elsewhere.

The bank has made a string of errors but at least you won't have to put up with them anymore. Hopefully your new bank will be more competent.

worried_jim

lianaf81 wrote: »

Worrief jim how can banks be so imcompetant?

They aren't always to blame sometimes it is the credit file companies like Experian that see the same or similar names at an address and make the link, the banks only go on the data provided on the credit report. Quite often I could see the same name but with different dob's on a credit file and would then verify that it is two different people, but there were many instances were it was the same person deceivingly trying to hide debt and commit fraud.

cynicalgit_2

I suggest you and your parents open accounts at different banks.

Experian_company_representative

The link can only be confirmed by a lender or a collector, never by us. We just host the data.

James