Virgin, mystery extra line: 2 judgments for Data Protection breaches - so far!!

[lemon_martini2]

Redacted response to the strikeout application that has been sent to the County Court included. Fortunately our County Court seems to be on the ball, as I have now received an auto response which clearly states 'this reply is confirmation that your email has been received' in case anyone has any accusations later on that it might go walkabouts and not turn up where it should have done.

 

StrikeOut3.docx

[lemon_martini2]

Copy of strike-out letter sent to Nicola Smith on Monday. Request for remote hearing sent to Exeter County Court and copy to Nicola Smith today as agreed (and an auto-response from the Court confirming it has arrived)

Cheque for £302 from second claim and warrant issued has arrived today!   (that's now £604 on two undefended claims,judgments and warrants...)

I'm now imagining them at Virgin Towers frantically running around realizing they have to justify how their defence was submitted over a week before the claim was made-should be very interesting to see what their explanation is!

[lemon_martini2]

Just a little email from our friends at the ICO:

'Thank you for your email of 26 May 2021. Your complaint had been closed as we had no reason to believe Virgin Media had not responded to you within 30 days.I have contacted Virgin Media today (3/6) to seek clarification of what action they have taken-as soon as I receive a response,I will contact you and advise you further'.

 

 

[lemon_martini2]

Another statement of arrears has landed on the doorstep-still stating the money has been owed since Nov 2019 despite the bank account showing payments in Dec/Jan 2020.

 

Another contact from the Executive Team to confirm I had received everything I had requested in the SAR and it could be marked as resolved to the ICO.

No,it couldn't be marked as resolved as there are still outstanding emails and letters that I have received that had not been included in the SRA.

In reply to their question-how do you know they haven't been included, I confirmed I had kept all the originals and checked off what was missing,so she was despatched to convey this to the Data Protection team. 

 

And surprise surprise instead I have had an email from the ICO stating that Virgin have informed them that the issues have all been resolved,they have complied and the customer is happy that they have done so-the ICO have been sent an email disabusing them of this notion.

[lemon_martini2]

Well no news to report. I contacted the courts-it has now been transferred to Exeter and when they decided to answer the phone on about the sixth attempt all we know now is that it is with the judge awaiting directions. I shall use the waiting time to do an SAR on other companies l have had cold halibuts with and see what that yields....

[lemon_martini2]

Ah of course that should be complaints.  Stoopid autocorrect. Out of my many and varied complaints, uncooked fish does not come into any of them...yet....

 

[lemon_martini2]

We have some action although it's a bit fluid in parts! Here's the main points from the notice of allocation.

 

1. *The case has been allocated to small claims track for 2pm on 20 Aug at Exeter County Court for no longer than 1 hour
2. *The case has been listed as a second fixture and will only be heard if earlier cases have been removed
3. *The claimant must contact the Civil Listing Officer on the last working day before to determine whether it will take place on that date or an alternative date.
4. *The case will take place via Microsoft Teams-court office is to make arrangements for this.
5. *By 20 July,each party must send to the court an email address to which invite to the video hearing will be sent.
6. *By 23 July(4pm) claimant must pay £80 or file a properly completed application for help with fees or the claim will be struck out and claimant will be liable for defendant's costs.
7. *By 27 July(4pm) claimant and defendant must exchange and send to court copies of all documents to be relied upon and written statements of all persons due to give evidence,including the parties themselves.
8. *By  3 Aug(4pm) parties will liaise and agree contents of trial bundle
9. *By 13 Aug(4pm) claimant must file and serve a paginated indexed digital trial bundle

 

 

 

[lemon_martini2]

A further Virgin reply in the mail(undated) with an update to my complaint.I've quoted verbatim-fans of literacy should brace themselves now!

 

Our findings:

'We've understand that you requested for a call recording and spoke to one of the executive about it and was adviced that not all of the of the call is recorded and all of the data that we are obliged to send has been sent already.We offered compensation to provide resolution of £50.00 GBP.I see you have declined the offer as you already spoke to the executive team and was provided a much higher compensation. But we do not see any compensations which was offered from 50.00GBP. If you has any query or for any more information please call us on the below number to discuss in detail or follow the link for any help...

Resolution:feedback given'

 

It also noted that 'if we don't hear back from you after 28 days,we'll assume you agree with the result and close your complaint'.

 

 

[lemon_martini2]

On my list of things to do this weekend-got all my paperwork in order. 

Just one thing I'm not certain about-if I'm including the calls with the Executive Team as part of my evidence how do I submit them as part of my bundle-do they need to be transcripts or copies of the audio files? 

[lemon_martini2]

Court has been sent the email address that will be used for the case and autoacknowledgement received.

 

Am now filling out form for assistance with court fees and preparing our argument focusing only on the failure to respond to the SAR.

If they dispute that it is really worth £600, I shall use the email sent by their Executive Team in December offering £500

It will be difficult for them to persuade the judge that my distress was worth £500 at Christmas 2020, but not worth £600 eight months later.

[lemon_martini2]

1. DONE-sent and confirmation received*By 20 July,each party must send to the court an email address to which invite to the video hearing will be sent.
2. *WORKING ON NOW-By 23 July(4pm) claimant must pay £80 or file a properly completed application for help with fees or the claim will be struck out and claimant will be liable for defendant's costs.
3. *By 27 July(4pm) claimant and defendant must exchange and send to court copies of all documents to be relied upon and written statements of all persons due to give evidence,including the parties themselves.
4. *By  3 Aug(4pm) parties will liaise and agree contents of trial bundle
5. *By 13 Aug(4pm) claimant must file and serve a paginated indexed digital trial bundle

[lemon_martini2]

We have moved on somewhat-court bundles were exchanged-

mine focused specifically on the SAR requests I made, their replies when they confirmed receipt of them and their compliance or otherwise and the lack of a signed agreement included,the failure to put in a defence for any of the previous claims,=the acknowledgment by their team that they did not have the original invoice and the acknowledgement from the Executive Team that they had failed and the offer that was submitted.

 

Theirs consisted of a statement by Beverly from the Executive Team and a 'Sharon' from the call centre mainly blaming the pandemic for their failure to comply with the time limits-interestingly in their defence they specified only three SAR requests had been made,but here several requests have been mentioned. They have also not included any SAR requests or answers including any dates,but generic identical replies..

 

Since then, I have attempted to liaise with them to agree the contents of the trial bundle as per the court's instructions-this should have been completed by 4pm today.I have had no contact from them at all and this has been brought to the court's attention that they have failed to comply.
 

[lemon_martini2]

@BankFodder I informed the court by email and copied in their solicitor Nicola Smith and to the Virgin Media contact email from which I received a reply stating they do not accept emails at that inbox and giving contact details for how to get in touch with them.

 

This morning I had an email from Nicola Smith, stating that

'Upon considering our file of papers we note that no draft bundle was provided by you for consideration, rather than an email submitted to the Court by you on 27 July enclosing documents in readiness for the hearing listed for 20 August.

Notwithstanding the above however we confirm that the contents of the bundle should be in accordance with paragraph 12 of the order of District Judge _____ on 29 June 2021. We would be grateful if you could provide a copy for perusal if it has been prepared.'

So they are saying

:they never received a draft bundle,

:then they did receive it but despite it being in exactly the same format as theirs, they did not term it a draft bundle

:then despite having acknowledged receipt of it, they need another copy to be sent to them.

I'm not doing their work for them-they have a copy which they have acknowledged,they can peruse that.

 

Next deadline is 13 August for the claimant to file and serve a 'paginated indexed digital trial  bundle' whatever one of those might be when it's at home...

 

[lemon_martini2]

The email they supplied me with was for this Nicola Smith, who is their solicitor and works for someone called Liberty Global. The Virgin email I sent it to (webteam@virginmedia.co.uk) is the address that has replied to all my previous SAR requests and queries. Perhaps they think this Nicola Smith's email will be sufficient.

 

On the bundle-it will be very hard for Virgin to claim non-receipt as it was sent to the court,Virgin and Nicola Smith together. The court has autoresponded to confirm receipt-furthermore as Nicola Smith and Virgin were included as CC's,the court will not only be able to produce the original email, but proof that the other addresses it was sent to were correct. The chances of only 1 out of 3 correctly addressed emails reaching their destination must be remarkably small! 

 

 

[lemon_martini2]

Preparing paperwork for the next deadline. What is a 'paginated indexed digital trial bundle?'-just a posh way of saying everything I need for the trial online with index and page numbering? 

[lemon_martini2]

Thanks for that-very useful. I've downloaded a free trial version of Adobe Acrobat(making sure to cancel it as soon as I've finished so as not to get charged) and am ploughing through it whilst watching the video. I assume I just submit any document that I want to be considered and then divide them into suitable categories (eg data access requests, previous claims)?

[lemon_martini2]

Friday 13 Aug at 4pm 

 

[lemon_martini2]

Just got to put documents in place! 

Couple of points that I've noticed whilst looking at their statements:

1.In their DQ,Nicola Smith says that she will be the only witness-yet interestingly in their defence she did not identify herself as being the composer of it.

2.In the statement from Beverley,she refers to at least seven SAR requests yet in their defence they only specify three were ever made(and one rejected).
3.And just for entertainment value,in the statement from Sharon, the exhibits are labelled SJ1-SJ8. Yet in the statement itself,there are only references to SJ4-8. The first three exhibits are actually referred to as JS1-3 

 

[lemon_martini2]

Also, when it states to file and serve the documents-is that just to the Court or to Nicola and her crew too?

[lemon_martini2]

*does happy dance* Bundle all completed and sent off,with the help of the very useful webinar. Very glad to no longer have to deal with Adobe Acrobat-not easy to learn overnight. 

Have confined the documents I require to purely SAR requests and their replies(or lack thereof), their defence and the written offer from the executive team as everything else is irrelevant on this claim.

 

*after having gone to get mail, I have received a reply from Nicola Smith-apparently she wants the claim form, acknowledgment of service, allocation to small claims, DQ, transfer of proceedings and notice of hearing all to be included within my bundle too and resent out before the deadline...

 

[lemon_martini2]

Nothing received so far.

 

[lemon_martini2]

First exchange was 27/7- all they submitted for that was two statements from Beverly(on the Executive Team) and 'Sharon'-a call centre worker. This one is today by 4pm.

[lemon_martini2]

We have hit a little snag-the hearing is due to take place tomorrow virtually and the court have not given me any details of how it will take place-the Zoom code or room name or anything like that. I have tried ringing them today but the phone has just rung off the hook until 3pm when a message tells me they are only answering calls between 10am and 3pm due to Covid. I've sent the court an email as well to inform them, to make sure that Virgin can't win by default just by turning up online and then claiming I failed to attend.

[lemon_martini2]

It's 2pm tomorrow.

[lemon_martini2]

Mobile will be on and I shall be emailing the court and Virgin tonight and tomorrow morning and as soon as court lines open at 10am I shall be calling them- I was calling constantly today but no-one was picking up. I was hoping that the court would have everything in order and have the details ready which is why I didn't panic at the beginning of the week when I hadn't heard anything.