Estate Agent has sent wrong tenancy agreement

Mr_N

Hello,

We've just agreed to renew our tenancy agreement with our landlord. This is all dealt with via the estate agent and we just received what was meant to be the new agreement in the post. The problem is they've actually sent an agreement for a completely different property/tenant. This includes a fair amount of personal information, some of which can be used as proof of identity (name, address, amount paid in rent each month). I'm concerned that they may have also sent our tenancy agreement to the people who's we received, along with the same personal information.

My question really is: how serious is this for the estate agent? Is it worth making a fuss and what's the correct way to go about it? Could I use it as leverage regarding negotiation of future fees?

Thanks for the help.

Miss_Samantha

Storms and teacups spring to mind...

G_M

Good grief!

Dear Mr estate agent,

thank you for your letter dated xx/xx/16. Unfortunately you seem to have enclosed the wrong tenancy agreement, which I now retun enclosed.

I look forward to receiving the correct agreement shortly.

yours sincerely,

Mr N

sorted.

Mr_N

Fair enough, I just take breaches of personal information quite seriously, especially when we're paying for a service. I don't think that's an irrational concern. I know a lot of companies often take this sort of thing quite seriously.

[Deleted User]

I remember about 20 years ago, I was writing to someone. Nothing personal, it wasn't romantic, nothing incriminating. Anyway, I decided to not take the friendship any further and he asked me to return the letters he'd sent. I was completely startled, I'd already thrown them away but he was outraged at this. I'm not entirely sure what damage he thought could be caused by the completely innocuous letters. At that point I just felt my decision had been confirmed.

Obviously a mistake was made with the tenancy agreement but no law has been broken. It was just a mistake. Fortunately you are an honorable person and the TA can just be returned to the LA with an explanatory note.

The sort of breaches that are more serious are ones relating to finances , like revealing a person's income together with personal details, or where a 100k people's data is left in a taxi etc. Fortunately, this mistake has not put the other person's personal data at risk as you wouldn't be interested in that kind of thing. The likelihood of that is small (not every second person is a crook that will leap on this information and think ooooh I'll apply for a twentieth credit card this morning'). The breach exists, but the damage is minimal, as is the risk.