You have kindly given me advice before regarding DPA requests and I have finally, after six months, received my file. However, it appears to be lacking in some areas (polite way of saying I don't think they have sent everything). There is no documentation relating to the actual marketing and subsequent sale of the property. There is a 'report' which states the property had 9 viewings and sold three times but all the sales fell through due to problems with the management company (boyf suggests management company or someone connected may have bought it??). There are six 'best price' certificats by two different companies (both working from the same address - Taylors Estate Agents and Countrywide Surveyors - are they connected?) which drop the value #4,000 in a six month period. There is also a letter recommending selling the property at auction but I don't know if that happened. Also a document recording a field visit by the a rep of the lender in Sept'93 saying property was worth #30K but prop sold in, I think, Sept '96 for #10k - Did property prices fall that much? From the docs I have the property was put on the market for #15,000 - do they normally accept such a low offer?

Also from the notes made by the Recoveries Officer, it seems that they carried out a credit search on me in June of this year - is this normal? the search has not been recorded.

They have given me 14 days to telephone them (yeah right!) but I am not sure where to go from here - should I have received more iformation or do I go to the Estate Agent and request information from them direct. I would have thought that the Nationwide, as vendors, would have paperwork on the sale itself and that I would be entitled to see it.

-- (Linda.Northampton@cwcom.net), September 02, 2000

Answers

I've tried to answer your questions in rough order...

It's certainly possible, and even quite likely, that the management company bought your property if it was a long leasehold flat. If so (and a Land Registry search will probably tell you, as will waiting for the lender to issue a writ and then using "Discovery" rights), then it is likely that your lender will have a hard time winning against you in court. See recent newsletters in the library for why this is.

Property price falls varied enormously around the country and varied with property type too. I'm not sure what you mean when you say the property was "put on the market for #15,000". Do you mean they put a #15,000 asking price on it in a public advert?

Credit searches against repossessees are normal - see the Do's and Don'ts section for much explanation of why they did it.

Under current Data Protection law, they don't have to send you paperwork yet, only electronic records. But to take you to court they will have to produce paper records if you invoke your Discovery rights (and you will, of course) at which point you can make them an offer or continue to fight, depending on what you find.

I don't have room here for a detailed expalanation of these answers but it is all in the Do's and Don'ts section.

I'm very interested in seeing copies of the documents that show they did a credit search on you and the document (presumably a credit reference agency record) that has your record without the search showing up. I will explain why if you contact me directly at repossession@bigfoot.com.

Sorry for the delay in replying - things have been frantic here.

Lee

-- Lee (repossession@bigfoot.com), September 10, 2000.

Can I just add for anyone reading this and thinking about using the Data Protection Act, that once you have served your Subject Access Rights notice (see this site for details of how to do this) and paid the fee (e.g., at current rates, #10 for Abbey National and #20 for Eversheds) that the organisation concerned has 40 days to comply with the Act. That is, they must send you copies of all the electronically-held material they have on you within 40 days of receiving the notice and the fee. (Always use Recorded Delivery to send these; and a postal order is a good way of paying the fee.) The material they send you must be in intelligible form - i.e. they must explain codes, abbreviations etc.

-- Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), September 10, 2000.