Tesco refused to tell me if my late mother had been a fraud victim

AFTER my mother passed away, I noticed large payments from her bank account to Tesco.

She employed a cleaner/‘carer’ who knew the PIN of her debit card. I don’t want to think that this person has abused my mother’s trust and there may be an innocent explanation.

I contacted Tesco to ask if they would release details of my mother’s shopping history. At first they were willing to do this, but then did a volte-face.

I do not want to go to the expense or distress of a solicitor when Tesco could employ a modicum of common sense and release the details to ascertain whether my mother has been the victim of fraud.

I have no other motive than to satisfy myself that someone my mother trusted was worthy of that trust. K. H., by email. What objection could tesco have to sharing your mum’s shopping details?

Judging from the responses you were getting, some self-important twerp had got himself tangled up over data protection.

Instead of checking what the regulations were regarding sharing this sort of information, he chose to make your life difficult.

Your mum died leaving no will. the banks were helpful and did not ask for Letters of administration in order to release assets. Yet tesco demanded them in order to share your mum’s shopping lists!

they also asked for written authorisation, signed and dated by the personal representative of the deceased person.

and they asked you to complete a subject access request. this is basically a formal request to release data. how utterly daft!

as you said in your longer letter, tesco wanted more information than you had provided to get bank statements, your mum’s medical history and her postmortem report. the Information Commissioner’s Office confirmed to you that neither the Data Protection act nor the General Data Protection Regulations applied.

Finally, tesco relented and provided the information you had requested. But its actions throughout this affair were unhelpful and shameful.

a tesco spokesman says: ‘We’re sorry for Ms h’s loss. In order to protect our customers we ask for proof of identity before sharing customer details. as soon as she did this we were happy to share the information requested.’

I asked about sending you some flowers or vouchers by way of apology. No offer was forthcoming, though it did waive the fee that is normally charged for providing old shopping lists. MY HALIFAX mortgage payment is usually made on the 27th of the month. For some reason the December payment was not made. I picked this up on January 4 and made a payment — four working days late.

Halifax reported this to credit agencies as a late payment, damaging our credit score. But its terms and conditions say that a payment must be ‘a full 30 days late’ to appear on a credit report. O. R ., Greater Manchester. haLIFax argues that when you signed up for your mortgage you gave it permission to share information about your account with credit reference agencies.

It further says that it is ‘required to provide a month-end report of outstanding payments to the relevant credit reference agencies’.

It argues that in providing the information at the end of December it was following procedure. however, this is not a requirement; it is merely an agreement with the credit reference agencies — which are businesses, not regulators.

halifax says if the late payment was caused by your bank, you should ask for a letter confirming this and apply to have a correction applied to your credit file.

You had also contacted the Financial Ombudsman, a fact of which I was not aware when I intervened because you did not tell me. I, therefore, stepped back and awaited its opinion.

It has recommended against your complaint being upheld. It says that because no payment was made in December, halifax was entitled to record it. You may choose to contest this view and ask for a final opinion.

I would like to remind other readers that if the Financial Ombudsman is involved, I cannot investigate your complaint.