Bank Account - Data Protection

[Arrods]

Have had two payments from business clients who inadvertently failed to provide any information to help us identify the invoice numbers so that we could mark them off as paid.

Spoke to bank who wouldn't provide any information because of 'data protection'. Surely they could have either asked their customer for permission to pass on the information (we only needed an Invoice number) or asked their customer to get in touch with us to provide it.

Was that too much to ask or is it all about 'data protection'?

[Flonska]

Presumably your accounts clerk was not able to data sort accounts and match invoice amounts to remittances?

[Arrods]

Thanks Flonska, but too many to match with invoice amounts.

Fortunately we have since resolved the issues but I was hoping that, if it happens again, the bank would be more helpful.

[woofgang]

put a message on your invoices explaining the problem and saying that customers MUST provide sufficient information when making payments

[New Judge]

Unfortunately too many organisations cite "data protection" as an erroneous "catch all" to avoid doing any work. There is no reason why they could not have done either of the things you mention.

[Flonska]

If the remittance did not have any "reference" details, I am not sure
what either your or the client's bank could do to help and even if the could, I guess it may have been a case of "I know, I will use the DPA to avoid doing any work to find out?"

Looks like this is something you will need to address direct with the clients or their own account departments?

A customer of ours invariably made payments without quoting any details. After several months, our accounts department got fed up of the behaviour so I shredded the next cheque received and issued an overdue account notice. We never had any problems after that.

[Flonska]

^even if they could^

[Peter Pedant]

I think this is pukka to be honest
you say you spoke to the bank and they dont know if you are Mother Reilly or whomever
new GDPR roolz
so they are pretty well bound to say rules is rules is rules

I think they were refusing to give you someone else's data
which I would have thought was within the law
( there is no implied consent on the payer than bank info wd pass their info onto the payee to assist his accounting )

I had tesco bank refuse to receive data about their being defrauded.
I did give benjie doodah (the CEO) a good ear-pulling over this.
werent tesco later defrauded ..... yes I wrote to them again and said they would have to pay all their out of pocket customers because they had done NOTHING when I had warned them a year or so previously. Benjie doo dah wrote a less than enthusiatic reply saying he remembered me.

[Peter Pedant]

// Looks like this is something you will need to address direct with the clients or their own account departments? //

great bean counters think alike Flawnska
I love your name - sort of the lady's equiv of flonski - perhaps a musician poet or turn of the century revolutionary - a tsarist judge perhaps

yes I thought of doing that
but the payee doesnt know which little blighter it is that is forgetting....
because if he did, then he could reconcile the pay,ment to the invoice.

[Arrods]

99.9% times it's fine which isn't bad considering the business we're in generates relatively few repeat clients. It's just that I want an easy life. :-)

[Arrods]

Pp - as NJ says, we were not asking the bank to pass on personal data. And it was a face-to-face meeting with the bank guy. In hindsight we should have pressed him further.

[Flonska]

Don't we all . . . . especially to avoid becoming "unpaid employees" of those who get in a mucking fuddle through their own incompetence and then expect us, the customers, to sort it out for them!