Santander ignored/refused subject access request

h00vertime

Long story short I was scammed out of £2140 in what I believe was a Sophisticated PPA scam but Santander say is a dispute between me and the seller and are refusing to refund. I also believe Santander's negligence was to blame as they had enough red flags and warnings. It may be a slightly unusual case because it happened in person when I went to buy a car.

brief series of events...

-I went to look at a car and agreed to buy it

-I Transfered £10 which arrived to the seller immediately

-I transferred the rest which apparently did not arrive 

- a second person entered the vehicle and the seller said he was going to leave me with him to finish the deal as he had to leave

 - I was on the phone originally trying to authorise the transaction but when the second person entered the vehicle, realising i could be being scammed I Deliberately rang off the call before passing security.

- santander then sent me a txt asking if I recognised the transaction to which I replied 'NO' 

- thinking the transaction had not been processed i left the scene.

- the seller then deleted all whatsapp messages and removed the advert

- I have reported to the police/actionfraud who have said there are no viable lines of enquiry. which when i enquired was told the car reg didnt match to anyone or the phone number or the bank details.

-Santander said the payment was flagged by security and they tried to contact me but couldn't so processed it anyway after 2 days in which time i was locked out of my online banking and didnt have the 1.5hrs it takes to get through on the phone to them as i had to go bk to sea.

-they have also said the the dispute is not covered by the code for PPA fraud as it is a dispute between me and the seller.

- they have ignored my subject access requests x3


All the solicitors I have spoken to have said the amount of money is not worth them getting involved or they cant act adverse to Santander, As Santander are ignoring my subject access requests how do i get evidence to go to small claims or the ombudsman, is it enough for me to go before a judge, tell them the story under oath and they provide evidence to the contrary?? any help or info on where to get advise would be great TIA

eskbanker

Any organisation ignoring a valid subject access request can be reported to the Information Commissioner's Office, but what specifically have you asked for?  Have they actually failed to respond, or have they just asserted that they don't have what you're looking for or that you're not entitled to it?

h00vertime

everything. all calls are recorded so all the call recordings, messages they have sent with times, correspondences ect. They havnt responded.

[Deleted User]

How did you request it and where did you send it? 

The most likely explanation is that it's not getting to them.

born_again

They will not supply call recordings, as a recording (many people have no way of playing them back) They will have to transcribe them to text. As you can guess this takes time. So you may well be sat waiting till someone gets round to your request.
Finding calls takes time, & depending on how long ago, may no longer have the recordings. As they tend to have fixed storage space & once full calls get overwritten.

eskbanker

h00vertime said:

- santander then sent me a txt asking if I recognised the transaction to which I replied 'NO' 

[...]

-Santander said the payment was flagged by security and they tried to contact me but couldn't so processed it anyway after 2 days

On the face of it, this is worth a formal complaint to Santander, which is likely to be a more productive avenue than asserting a scam and chasing subject access requests.  If you confirmed that you didn't recognise the payment then that should have been sufficient to prevent its processing - if they considered it necessary to contact you then they shouldn't have gone ahead without approval but certainly not if you'd specifically rejected it, although they could claim that they didn't receive your message....

h00vertime

I have made a formal complaint... the SAR was sent in writing to the person who dealt with my complaint after they rejected it.

they said that pressing 'No' doesn't stop the payment, it only alerted them. and they tried to contact me but failed.

also they processed it even though I failed security.

either way, chasing a scam through the CRM code or making a complaint against santander I still need to arm my self by getting the evidence from a SAR??

with respect to the recordings... transcribed by whom?? iv sat in on some disciplinary meetings at work and some 'transcriptions' can be extremely biased.

eskbanker

h00vertime said:

I have made a formal complaint... the SAR was sent in writing to the person who dealt with my complaint after they rejected it.

You'd probably be better following their defined SAR process, i.e. via their data protection function, rather than sending it to a member of their complaints team.

If you've already had your complaint rejected, you can escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

h00vertime

interestingly one time when i rang, the santander operator actually said like you did that it shouldnt have gone through when I pressed no. I want all of this its all recorded!! 

Santander also said I "changed my mind and the dispute is between me and a legitimate seller"  yeah I changed my mind... when the penny dropped and the scammer who Id just pinged 2k said he was going to leave me with someone who had just got in the car.

eskbanker

h00vertime said:

Santander also said I "changed my mind and the dispute is between me and a legitimate seller"  yeah I changed my mind... when the penny dropped and the scammer who Id just pinged 2k said he was going to leave me with someone who had just got in the car.

In itself that doesn't signify a scam, so I can see why Santander might categorise this as a change of mind - you were originally happy to pay and were in the process of doing so before unilaterally deciding not to proceed?

Subsequent issues with the payment approval don't really change that, but do seem to be a separate issue worth pursuing anyway....

h00vertime

oh really... lol how come I ended up getting scammed then?? Im down 2k ,all messages deleted and the guy vanished. the police have said neither the reg or the bank account can be found or the person.