Bank complaint... data protection?

[saveyourkissesforme]

I registered a complaint with my bank regarding some fraudulent transactions. They responded as they should by email saying that they would respond in max eight weeks and that if unsatisfied we could then go to the Ombudsman.

To cut a long story short. Two additional emails were sent by me with info about this case and acknowledged. But after ten weeks there was no answer from them. After a couple of phone calls to them they eventually claimed on the phone that I had not made a complaint about this matter but that actually I had made a complaint about another company. In other words they somehow linked someone else's complaint to my account and seemingly had no record of mine. Furthernore they were adamant that this other complaint was mine. After 90 minutes and some holding on the phone (I suspect that they listened to phone scripts to confirm that the other case was not mine) they finally opened a case on my original complaint and said that I will now be sent a letter stating that they will look at this in a max of eight weeks from now.

AIBU? How can they have mixed up my complaint with someone else's???? This is a major high street bank.

Financial institutions breach data protection all the time and normally self refer their breaches.

The FOS takes around a minimum of 4 months to look at cases, so if you put in a complaint to them unless the bank/insurer customer service is terrible - yes I'm looking at you Nationwide and Co-op - they will have resolved the issue by then.

I try always to complain by signed for snail mail as well as by phone and in person. Experience has taught me financial institutions with very poor customer service are easily caught out by that. Good financial institutions - yes Aviva and Metrobank - have normally resolved the issue by the time they have received the letter.

I should add my complaints are a mixture of personal and small business transactions.

Unless they disclosed another customer's information to you, or your to them there is no data protection issue. Probably just a keying error, annoying though it may be. Hope your complaint is now dealt with efficiently.

Thanks. I'm just incredibly frustrated really that they've been so inept and still many thousands of pounds out of pocket with no light at the end of the tunnel. I know the Ombudsman can take months but it's now almost four months since this happened so I need to have them look at it in parallel. It's an eyeopener. If anything like this happens again I guess at least I know the ropes now.

I do not see the data protection breach. In any event, I can't see it is going to get you anywhere even if they were in breach.

Send a letter with dates and details of your actions, a log of the time you have wasted, and be very specific about the remedy you are seeking - which must request the complaint is accelerated to immediate action to the registered office of the bank marked for the attention of the board of directors.

This will get you results.