{"id":441,"date":"2008-03-18T12:54:54","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T12:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=441"},"modified":"2008-05-27T22:03:39","modified_gmt":"2008-05-27T21:03:39","slug":"got-the-abbey-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=441","title":{"rendered":"Got the Abbey Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"

It used to be be an advertising slogan that the Abbey National Building Society used. I remember it well. The accompanying logo was a cartoon ‘thumbs up’, to indicate that everything was just fine and dandy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Well we have the Abbey Habit.<\/p>\n

And we’re trying to kick it.<\/p>\n

We’ve been trying to kick it for a year (being the period of time we’ve lived in this house).<\/p>\n

Every month, for a year, we’ve received mail through the letterbox, mail addressed to a previous resident – someone so long gone that we have no forwarding address for her.<\/p>\n

We didn’t take over the house from her, it was empty when we moved in.<\/p>\n

Like dutiful people we’ve hashed out the addressee details, marked the post ‘Addressee unknown, please return to sender’ (the sender – Abbey National Bank Plc – imprints their return address on everything).<\/p>\n

Yep, we’ve been doing this at least once a month for a year.<\/p>\n

I say ‘at least once a month’ because amongst the regular monthly mailings from Abbey National are (sit down, this’ll stun you) credit card statements.<\/p>\n

We know they’re credit card statements because three months ago – puzzled as to why Abbey National have taken no action to get these regular mailings stopped – we started opening them.<\/p>\n

How surprised do you think we were to find credit card statements – with transactions! – addressed to a person who has not lived in this house for a year?<\/p>\n

Very!<\/p>\n

So a couple of months ago I took one of these credit card statements in to work and called the telephone number printed on it.<\/p>\n

I spoke to a very nice person.<\/p>\n

I spoke to four very nice persons.<\/p>\n

None of whom felt sufficiently empowered to help me.<\/p>\n

So I got passed from pillar to post and back again.<\/p>\n

I spoke to a customer services adviser who listened sympathetically, said she couldn’t help me and passed me on to the credit card issuer.<\/p>\n

They couldn’t help me and passed me on again.<\/p>\n

This time I spoke to the credit card fraud department (who rather sharply pointed out that as no credit card fraud was actually being committed, I was obviously speaking to the wrong people), who passed me back – once again – to the credit card issuer.<\/p>\n

They advised me to pop in to a local branch to try and sort it out.<\/p>\n

What?<\/p>\n

This is my time, people.<\/p>\n

Are you all completely fucking barking mad?<\/p>\n

Here’s the goods straight from someone who knows:<\/p>\n

Abbey National Plc are in serious breach of the Data Protection Act for failing to safeguard personal data and failing to correct errors in data handling when the said errors have been repeatedly pointed out to them.<\/p>\n

I said all that.<\/p>\n

Actually, I said all that to every single person I spoke to on that day.<\/p>\n

Guess what?<\/p>\n

The incoming mail hasn’t stopped.<\/p>\n

This morning I got a new PIN for a new credit card that will shortly follow.<\/p>\n

Except the credit card will be in the name of someone else – I mean, do I even look like my name is Miss Rachel Banks?<\/p>\n

Do I?<\/p>\n

So I rang Abbey National again – about 20 minutes ago when I had a space in my professional day.<\/p>\n

This time I rang Head Office and asked for the Complaints Department.<\/p>\n

I spoke to another very nice person.<\/p>\n

I’m sure Abbey National staff are all recruited on the basis of being very nice people.<\/p>\n

Even if – to date – ineffective.<\/p>\n

But the very nice Complaints person I spoke to this morning said that they’d be writing to me within five days to confirm that action was being undertaken.<\/p>\n

But he did, bizarrely, ask if he could take some security details from me and then ask me my date of birth.<\/p>\n

I’m not an Abbey National customer, I shrieked in horror. I’m just trying to stop Abbey National from breaking the law.<\/p>\n

So, I should expect a letter.<\/p>\n

In five days or so.<\/p>\n

Breath and holding, anyone?<\/p>\n

B<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It used to be be an advertising slogan that the Abbey National Building Society used. I remember it well. The accompanying logo was a cartoon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}