Tesco and supply of personal information

parsi

I am currently on my 84th day of waiting for Tesco to supply me with the inofrmation they hold on me. My complaint has been with the Data Protection Office for 44 days and counting.

Has anyone here successfully got their personal information from Tesco either directly or through the intervention of a third party ?

theking

Just to note that when counting these days you should exclude non-working days to get an accurate count as far as the legislation is concerned.

parsi

Well the "consumer" page doesn't make that very clear at all - especially since all days are working now (or so it seems).


"Once you have made your request, and paid any appropriate fee, you must be given the information within 40 days, although most organisations manage to reply much sooner."

However even allowing for it being 40 working days (in the trad sense) they are still bloody well overdue...

theking

Were I you, I'd ring the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner

1890 252231

And ask them for an update.

Let us know what they say afterwards.

EDIT: Just a thought- did you send Tesco the required money with your original request?

MadsL

Waiting 14 months now for a reply from Quinn Direct (think I upset them )

parsi

theking wrote:

Were I you, I'd ring the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner

1890 252231

And ask them for an update.

Let us know what they say afterwards.

EDIT: Just a thought- did you send Tesco the required money with your original request?

I'm keeping it via email for the moment - better for records.

I didn't send Tesco money (it was an email). I chose the email route as I figured they could ask for the money if they wanted but at least there'd be a better record of the request.

parsi

As a follow-on to this :

After (yet) another email I was informed on Monday that Tesco had told the data protection office that they would send out my information this week. So watch this space... actually don't watch it if you have anything better to do.

theking

Watching and waiting. Will be interested to hear the amount of information you get back.

Without giving more away than you're comfortable with, may I ask if you have, and if you use, a Tesco Clubcard?

parsi

Well I got my information this morning - a single sheet. I hope to scan it at some stage but the gist of it is:

- name, address , date of birth , clubcard number,
- favourite(!) store, first seen date, last shopped date, last store,
- coupon redeemer (y/n), type of shopper, lifestyle segment,
- dietary restrictions (have me as a coeliac for some reason),
- babyclub (y/n)

And that's more or less it - not a lot of information and makes it hard to see why I had to wait since 11 October for it !

parsi

Well this is how our Data Protection Office stands up for the little guy against the might of one of the world's largest retailers :

"Brief Description : concluding email to DS
Comments :

Mr. *******,

This Office contacted the Data Compliance Manager in Tesco during the
investigation of your complaint. They were reminded of their obligations
under the Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003 at this stage. We are of the
oppinion that they are aware of their obligations and that "human error"
was the reason for the delay in the response to your original email to them
in October 2005.

This Office will not be taking any further action on this matter.

I trust that this clarifies the situation for you.

Regards,
***********.
24/01/2006

____________________________________________________________________________________

Office of the Data Protection Commissioner
Block 6
Irish Life Centre
Lower Abbey Street
Dublin 1
Ireland
telephone: + 353 (0)1 874 8544
fax: + 353 (0)1 874 5405
website: www.dataprotection.ie "

So that's it really. I do something through human error and I'll get penalised. Tesco ignore repeated requests and get away with it.

As we have seen with the National directory Database so-called consumer rights legislation is just a figleaf designed to make us think we have rights when in fact they'll never be enforced.

antoinolachtnai

What is the National directory Database?

parsi

It is the database of all telephone numbers - you can contact your telephone service provider and ask that they register you on it with a "do not call with spamming ****e messages" flag.

antoinolachtnai

What is the problem with that database?

parsi

The problem was that the service of being able to be excluded from spamcalls was advertised but then there was a 6week (or so) period during which requests were unable to be actioned. However no-one told the people who had made the requests that the requests went unactioned...so you had to re-request and then only if you knew that you had to. And so the 28-day wait period (before you could tell spamcallers to feck off) began again..

Tom Young

Hi, there is a mechanism called a DSAR - Data Subject Access Requests, processed in your favour by a law enforcement agency or a court. That should mean that you can get the access to the information held by whoever you suspect or know might have data etc.

The right is drawn from Article 12 of the EU Directive 95/46 and in Ireland can be found in Section 4.

DP Principles (Quick and Dirty)

1st fair and lawful processing
2nd used only for purpose for which is was collected
3rd adequate, relevant and not excessive
4th accurate and current
5th not to be kept for longer than necessary
6th processed in accordance with data subject’s rights
7th kept securely
8th only transferred to countries providing adequate data protection

Tom Young

antoinolachtnai wrote:

What is the National directory Database?

Database run by eircom to store the User profiles and characteristics of numbers on the national network.

Some interesting charateristics might include, ex-directory, "do not call" etc.

Other operators have access to update and input, particularly if they offer numbers off their own networks. WLR - Wholesale Line Rental, required that other operators update on lines that are in-fact rented from eircom at a wholesale level. LLU operators would also be obliged to comply.

lostexpectation

parsi wrote:

Well I got my information this morning - a single sheet. I hope to scan it at some stage but the gist of it is:

- name, address , date of birth , clubcard number,
- favourite(!) store, first seen date, last shopped date, last store,
- coupon redeemer (y/n), type of shopper, lifestyle segment,
- dietary restrictions (have me as a coeliac for some reason),
- babyclub (y/n)

And that's more or less it - not a lot of information and makes it hard to see why I had to wait since 11 October for it !

what was the info. or full category choices of info etc? lifestlye segment etc?

can you ask them to delete your info or change it eg the coelic thing?

antoinolachtnai

Hi there,

DRI would like to get some movement on this again.

Basically, I find it hard to believe that Tesco don't have a record of all the stuff you bought from them. You should get to see that list.

Would you be interested in digging into this again? DRI will give you whatever support we can.

Best,

Antoin.

Cryos

antoinolachtnai wrote:

Hi there,

DRI would like to get some movement on this again.

Basically, I find it hard to believe that Tesco don't have a record of all the stuff you bought from them. You should get to see that list.

Would you be interested in digging into this again? DRI will give you whatever support we can.

Best,

Antoin.

Hi antoinolachtnai,

Companys like tesco would genuinely only keep usefull information in a database, for example they would probably keep most purchased product and compare it with a database that has the most common purchases from other consumers.

I am a Custodian of data (someone who manages data but dosnt own it) for a well known irish company; It is inefficient on resources for companys to keep and compile useless information and therefore only take small bits of data for a greater cause.

Companys like tesco have their own internal auditing teams, any data that they are keeping without good reason must be removed.

Michael

Ste.phen

AFAIK they do know the specifics of things you've purchased:.

If you log into the tesco.ie site, and have your clubcard registered, (and use it regualrly in store) the "my favourite items" part of the site is prefilled with your most commonly purchased items.
When I did this it showed mostly alcohol, as that's really all I use my clubcard with.

Also, They run "XX% back on all Alcohol/TV/Toy/Computer/Etc purchases" promotions from time to time.
When computing the points to put on your clubcard account they have to be able to track your purchases from specific product categories, if not the actual products themselves, so this information must be somewhere.

Whether or not they're obliged to give you *all* the information or not, i dunno, but i'd say they have raw data for at least a few months and aggregate statistics indefinitely.

(edit: my puctuation sucks)
(edit2: 600 posts, whee!)

cgarvey

Blitz wrote:

Companys like tesco have their own internal auditing teams, any data that they are keeping without good reason must be removed.

They have good reason to track as much purchase history as they can. Don't underestimate the value of profiling, to them. If anyone disapproves, the excuse can be a simple "we do it to offer better value to our customers". My reading of the DPA is that it's quite subjective.

The value of the profiling potential far outweighs the cost of storage/processing, I'd guess. I'd imagine all the data they could possibly collect on a given customer would be valuable in terms of pofiling, so while I'm sure they have an internal audit team, I'd guess that they would be more for internal auditing (procedures / accounts, etc.).

I hate to be pedantic, but you made the mistake a few times.. companies is the plural of company, not companys

antoinolachtnai

They do have a good reason to keep the data. To build a profile of what kinds of goods and offers are going to be of interest to you. That's the whole point of the scheme. That's the reason a consumer signs up in the first place.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with doing this.

Now what about trying to get a copy of the data they *actually* hold?

For certain, they must hold at least a few months of detailed data.

DRI could really do with a volunteer to help with this.

parsi

antoinolachtnai wrote:

Hi there,

DRI would like to get some movement on this again.

Basically, I find it hard to believe that Tesco don't have a record of all the stuff you bought from them. You should get to see that list.

Would you be interested in digging into this again? DRI will give you whatever support we can.

Best,

Antoin.

Apologies for the delayed response.

I don't want to go down this road again. Since this episode I rarely shop in Tesco (but use its Mahon Point store as a shortcut) and have destroyed the clubcard. At this stage I am close to detesting them as an organisation and everytime I see their store something irks me so fighting this battle would just drive me nuts.

I think I'll stick to publishing pictures of their incompetence...

(yeah I know, lily-livered etc etc..)

antoinolachtnai

Anyone else on for this challenge!?