JAJA Credit Card refusing to close old Royal Mail account

Duet212

Hi all.

This is my first post and only just joined the forum so please correct anything I may have missed in the rules.

I received an email from JAJA a couple of days ago to tell me about accessing my card from an app. Not recognising the name and the fact they gave a "card ending in ****), I was immediatley suspicious. Further investigation revealed they had bought out Royal Mail. I had an RM credit card years ago.

I called JAJA, the woman was helpful but after confirming as much security details as I could and requesting the account and details be closed, she said because I couldn't give a recent transaction (I had the card about 8 years ago!) they could not send a closure letter to my new home address, therefore my details will live on their system.

Is there anything I can do to challenge this?

Thanks in advance.

molerat

It would have been a Post Office credit card, not RM.  Best way is a good old fashioned letter with a stamp and proof of postage giving as much detail as possible - name, former address etc - asking that they close the account., all the details should be checkable by them from the credit reference agencies.  If they come back that they can't close the account then you raise a complaint.

eskbanker

If your reference to "my new home address" signifies that they don't have your current details, they're obliged under the Data Protection Act to keep your data accurate and up to date so they must accept a change of address in the first instance, although obviously you should have notified them of this when moving, if it's an account that's still open.

https://jaja.co.uk/privacy-notice/ explains your rights and their obligations, so you can contact their data protection officer if you're having difficulty getting them to accept an address change notification.

https://jaja.co.uk/help/guides/contact/ has a postal address for them so that's probably going to be more productive than a phone call if you want to close the account down but aren't able to pass their verbal security checks - you may need to supply some sort of ID verification if they ask.

Duet212

molerat said:

It would have been a Post Office credit card, not RM.  Best way is a good old fashioned letter with a stamp and proof of postage giving as much detail as possible - name, former address etc - asking that they close the account., all the details should be checkable by them from the credit reference agencies.  If they come back that they can't close the account then you raise a complaint.

Yes. You're right. I mean't Post Office. Thank you. This is super helpful.

Duet212

Yeah. Thanks. I was quite careless when I was younger so any cards I had, once I'd finished with them, I'd cut them up and move on. Obviously these days our data is sat on so many servers and only nowadays are we privacy conscious. Again, really helpful advice. Thank you!

Duet212

eskbanker said:

If your reference to "my new home address" signifies that they don't have your current details, they're obliged under the Data Protection Act to keep your data accurate and up to date so they must accept a change of address in the first instance, although obviously you should have notified them of this when moving, if it's an account that's still open.

Yeah. Thanks. I was quite careless when I was younger so any cards I had, once I'd finished with them, I'd cut them up and move on. Obviously these days our data is sat on so many servers and only nowadays are we privacy conscious. Again, really helpful advice. Thank you!

penners324

Have you looked at the CRAs to see what accounts and credit cards are open in your name?

born_again

Duet212 said:

Hi all.

This is my first post and only just joined the forum so please correct anything I may have missed in the rules.

I received an email from JAJA a couple of days ago to tell me about accessing my card from an app. Not recognising the name and the fact they gave a "card ending in ****), I was immediatley suspicious. Further investigation revealed they had bought out Royal Mail. I had an RM credit card years ago.

I called JAJA, the woman was helpful but after confirming as much security details as I could and requesting the account and details be closed, she said because I couldn't give a recent transaction (I had the card about 8 years ago!) they could not send a closure letter to my new home address, therefore my details will live on their system.

Is there anything I can do to challenge this?

Thanks in advance.

TBH. If you have not used the card for years then it will already be closed. Especially if you have moved & not informed them. It will have been marked as gone away & dormant. Which would lead to closure.

eskbanker

Duet212 said:

eskbanker said:

If your reference to "my new home address" signifies that they don't have your current details, they're obliged under the Data Protection Act to keep your data accurate and up to date so they must accept a change of address in the first instance, although obviously you should have notified them of this when moving, if it's an account that's still open.

Yeah. Thanks. I was quite careless when I was younger so any cards I had, once I'd finished with them, I'd cut them up and move on. Obviously these days our data is sat on so many servers and only nowadays are we privacy conscious. Again, really helpful advice. Thank you!

You might not have paid much attention to privacy until recently but that's certainly not true for everyone!

Anyway, you may wish to tidy all that up, in case you have any other old credit accounts still open - there have been plenty of posters reporting backlogs of unexpected charges resulting from not advising providers of address changes, so worth checking your credit files to see what's still open:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/check-free-credit-report/