Request to the finance company for the contract and the history of your revolving credit card (tarjeta revolving)

Legal basis and things to bear in mind

• The written document relies on the right of access under article 15 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on data protection: you may obtain from the entity confirmation of what data of yours it processes and a copy of that data. Paragraph 3 of that same article allows a reasonable charge only for further copies, so that first copy cannot be billed to you.
• Article 15 also obliges the entity to tell you which recipients it has disclosed your data to and, where it did not obtain the data from you, what its source is. This is how you find out whether your contract ended up in the hands of another company, or whether your data was passed to a credit blacklist (fichero de solvencia patrimonial).
• In parallel we address the written document to the customer service department. Article 29 of Ley 44/2002, on measures to reform the financial system, obliges credit institutions and financial credit establishments to have that department, to provide it free of charge and to acknowledge receipt in writing, deciding in writing and with reasons as well.
• The deadline the law works with is one month from the day the entity receives the written document. Article 30.3.a of Ley 44/2002 requires proof that that month has gone by without a reply, or that the request has been refused, before you can go to the complaints service of the Banco de España. That is why we send the demand by burofax (a registered letter with certified content) with proof of delivery: the delivery date is the proof that the month started to run.
• It is worth knowing in advance: the complaints service of the Banco de España decides by means of reasoned reports which, by the express provision of article 30.2 of Ley 44/2002, are in no case an administrative act open to appeal. They guide and they carry weight, but they do not oblige the entity to hand you the documentation or to refund you any amount.
• If one entity issued the card and a different one is claiming from you today, the written document is addressed to whoever bought the debt as well, because whoever processes your data answers for its own duty of access under article 15 of the Regulation. The signed contract and the history of settlement statements, on the other hand, usually stay with whoever granted you the credit.
• Nobody can guarantee that the entity still keeps the contract you signed ten or fifteen years ago. What the law does secure for you is a copy of the data it processes about you today, and a refusal or a silence is not a wasted journey either: they put in writing that the entity cannot document what it has been charging you. Before handing anything over the entity may require your identity to be established, which is why your identity document is physically attached to the written document.
• It is worth not putting it off. Depending on how the claim is framed later on, the refund of what was overcharged may run into the general five-year limitation period that article 1964.2 of the Código Civil (Spanish Civil Code) sets for personal actions, which runs from the moment each amount could be demanded. Every month that goes by without the history in front of us is a month that may fall outside the reckoning.
• This service is the first step of the route and goes no further than obtaining the papers. With the contract and the history in front of us it is then possible to work out whether the interest applied was disproportionate and to claim it back from the entity; if the entity stays silent or answers evasively, you can turn to the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) as the supervisory authority. Each of those steps is contracted separately and we explain it to you when the time comes.