My property was repossessed in Jan 01. I have now had a shortfall letter from my lender, Alliance & Leicester, followed up soon by debt collection agency letter from JDL Holdings Ltd. I have served a SAR notice on A&L but the form returned says that they have a number of registration numbers under the Data Protection Act for each area of the business. I see on your website that it says do not tick boxes but put 'all info in all areas of business', but in this case they require the registration number for each area of business, and £10 for each registration number requested. A number of the areas could in fact hold info on me. Am I within my rights to just pay the £10 and ask for all areas of info to be supplied? Hope someone can help.

Thanks.

Frances

-- Frances Bates (fab152@yahoo.co.uk), October 15, 2001

Answers

Read also the page at: http://www.home-repo.org/dos/dpasar.htm which deals with this issue.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@home-repo.org), October 20, 2001.

I've been down this road - I didn't tick any boxes and requested ALL information - except they didn't seem to understand what exactly I meant by ALL. I helpfully defined ALL to them and they still say they might have something but unless I tell them what I am looking for how can they possibly help me. So yes, I am totally within my rights but stuffed none the less! If anyone can advise on how I get my SARN stuff I'd be grateful. After all - how can I tell them exactly what I want unless I know exactly what they have.

-- (_Believer14@excite.co.uk), October 16, 2001.

By now you should have both written to the Data Protection Registrar.

They are clearly refusing to comply with your request...

-- Chris (chrsh@hotmail.com), October 16, 2001.

Frances, They obviously think that they can take the 'proverbial' out of and that they are above remonstration. Well they can't and they're not!! If you haven't yet written to the D.P. Commissioner, as Chris suggests, make sure you do it a.s.a.p. to avoid any further nonsense from them. The B.Soc (or its' henchmen)are required to abide by the law as much as anyone else is and I would say that they are probably just being deliberately childish and awkard. Good luck, Joy.

-- Joy Harker (fightingback@harker.go-plus.net), October 16, 2001.

Try e-mailing the Data Protection Registrar - I did and got a reply within 4 days - very helpful advice.

-- deb (dp99@blueyonder.co), October 23, 2001.

Further to this, the Data Protection Registrar is now called the Information Commissioner, and the email address is: mail@dataprotection.gov.uk

My understanding is that you are allowed to ask for ALL the information held on you, and that the maximum fee for this should be ten quid. These firms can no longer charge £10 per category as they used to. And their data controllers should know that. If anyone has paid more, ask the Information Commissioner to write to the firm concerned and tell them to give you your money back. The Data Protection Commissioner (as she then was) did this for me with respect to Eversheds. Interesting, that, a firm of solicitors not understanding the Data Protection Act...........

-- E Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), October 29, 2001.