Financial institution posted letters to wrong address

P

PyritePete

Registered User
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Hi all,

we met with a financial institution recently & we received a call from them saying that some correspondence intended for us, was sent to another address.

They apologised for the error and will send us, what they sent to the wrong address.

It leaves us feeling annoyed. We understand that the original envelop was opened & that person may have read some information about us. we may never know who actually got our intended correspondence.

I know there is a similar thread last week but our circumstances are somewhat different and we didn't want to hijack that thread. Would the response be the same ?

What about EirCode ? How does this still occur - as we all have a unique Eircode.

This may have happened to posters on here or others, what would any advice be ?

Cheers,
Pete
 
many companies are not using eircode on cost grounds, quite possible banks are some of those and there is no obligation on them to use it.
 
Sounds to me like both parties acted in good faith here. How do you know the receiver either actually opened the letter or indeed read it ? They may simply have read the 'return to' address. Also the bank got in touch to ensure they had the correct address as it was somehow pointed out to them.
 
thanks for the replies. The letter was opened and was confirmed by the Financial institution. How do we know they didn't read it ?

Its disconcerting to learn that private info can be sent to an unintended person (when we have an EirCode system) who may have read it & we dont know has this being divulged to anyone else or not.

I would have thought that confidential financial documents should be better protected.

The local postman who delivered the letter is well known.
 
An Post's contract specifies they deliver to an address, not a named person.

My eircode is wrong. In the online map it points to a house 2 doors down from me. Thousands of other eircodes are wrong nationwide. ALL 64 addresses in our little estate are wrong. They are unique but they point to the wrong houses.
 
I work in IT in a financial institution and, some time ago, a bug in the software resulted in a change of address being applied to the wrong customer.
For what it's worth, it was taken very seriously as this is a major data protection breach. All previous such events were identified from the logs (there were a handful) and I added a fix to prevent it happening again.

You're right to be annoyed. Sometimes these things happen though. I hope the financial institution are being very apologetic!
 
PyritePete said:
The local postman who delivered the letter is well known.
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Are you saying he deliberately delivered to the wrong address or that he himself opened it ?
PyritePete said:
Its disconcerting to learn that private info can be sent to an unintended person (when we have an EirCode system) who may have read it & we dont know has this being divulged to anyone else or not.

I would have thought that confidential financial documents should be better protected.
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Other than insisting that documents in future be sent by registered post I'm not sure what can be done in these circumstances. If you're willing to pay more for the registered post then fair enough but no system of postal delivery is foolproof.
 
thanks all. Sorry Matzer, I hadn't realised the scale of the EirCode errors, maybe thats what happened with us ?

We dont believe the postman opened it. I mostly agree Elcato but surely its time or indeed well past time that these type of correspondences are treated more carefully. I suspect we are not the only ones who experienced this. I would pay for registered post or even have someone sign for it in our absence. Or I can collect it from the bank. maybe thats the solution.

We appreciate that these things happen.

Back to my first question, what next ?
 
In my case a stockbroker decided to start sending me all sorts of private information by email without even telling me that they were going to start communicating by email. We had always communicated by post. I only discovered this after two years when I sold shares over the phone and then rang up looking for the documentation.

They had misread my email address on a form.

Apparently about 15 emails were sent to someone else.
 
I received someone else's bank statements years ago addressed to me. And I didn't receive my own bank statements for about 9 months.
I gave the bank back the other party's statements and didn't even get a thank you off them.
I suspect my statements were going to someone else at the time. I had to hound the bank to get my own statements.
 
Banks have a legal duty of confidentiality to their customers and even if they breech that accidentally, it is still a breech.

I'm not clear from the posts if the error was the fault of the bank or An Post. For now, let's assume it is the banks fault. You should make a formal complaint in writing following the banks complaints procedures asking for an explanation as to what has happened, why it happened, what steps the bank have taken to prevent this happening again.

Secondly, have you suffered a financial loss as a result of this breech.? If so then the question of compensation may arise and you need legal advice on that

Thirdly, has your reputation been damaged by the leak?. Again, if so you may need to consider legal advice.

Lastly, even if you have no loss and/or reputational damage, you may have grounds for some compensation on distress and inconvenience, for example, the time you will spend on making the complaint.

Your next steps may depend on how the bank responds to your complaint. You should also contact the DPC to see if there is merit in raising a complaint there as well
 
RichInSpirit said:
I received someone else's bank statements years ago addressed to me. And I didn't receive my own bank statements for about 9 months.
I gave the bank back the other party's statements and didn't even get a thank you off them.
I suspect my statements were going to someone else at the time. I had to hound the bank to get my own statements.
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For approximately 5 years after I moved into my house, AIB used to send bank statements for the previous owner. I sent them back every time with "not known at this address" on the envelope. Eventually they stopped.
 
Ciadan said:
For approximately 5 years after I moved into my house, AIB used to send bank statements for the previous owner. I sent them back every time with "not known at this address" on the envelope. Eventually they stopped.
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Irritating no doubt, but more the previous owner's fault rather than the bank's, no?
 
Ciadan said:
For approximately 5 years after I moved into my house, AIB used to send bank statements for the previous owner. I sent them back every time with "not known at this address" on the envelope. Eventually they stopped.
Click to expand...

I'll go one better, Zurich have been sending me the previous owners statement for the last 20 years despite me returning the post and informing them of their mistake
 
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