ambersabarabia said:
hi,
please guide me in the same matter, since my bhabhi got rejection letter from cio on june and she is gathering her documents to apply again and in this attempt in order to get the benefit of 2 yr validity of ielts in case the eilts result is in hands of cio, she called the british council karachi pakistan and asked about the duplicate but they refused and said we do not issue duplicate to the candidate rather we only send it to the organization directly,then how can she get the copy please help if any body has solution for it
waiting thanks
Actually, they will SAY at first that they cannot issue a duplicate certificate directly to you, but it is possible.
In the UK there is a law called the Data Protection Act which in a nutshell means you can demand that anyone who holds information about you on their computer systems discloses such information in writing to you upon request. They are allowed to charge an admin fee for such a service, but they cannot legally refuse to provide the information. I believe that IELTS test results fall under this law, and that the British Council is potentially breaking the Data Protection Act by refusing to provide in writing a copy of the results.
I am not a lawyer, this is just my understanding of the law and how it might be interpreted to relate to the IELTS results, providing the results reside on a computer within the UK.
A forum member called Lubob had a similar problem and so I advised him as per above regarding the Data Protection Act in the UK. On the IELTS international website there is a form for filing grievances, and so he made a complaint threatening to sue them under the Data Protection Act if they did not provide duplicate results.
After a few days he received an email from them saying that they were contacting their unit in New Delhi. After a week or so he received email reply that he could get a 2nd additional copy if he could convince New Delhi authorities that he was in dire need of the 2nd copy, and he has since duly received it.
So it is possible, you just have to know where to push them!
With the possible legal ramifications of the Data Protection Act I really have no idea why they cannot provide a standard service where you just pay a fair admin fee and obtain a copy of the certificate.
Perhaps if enough people press them on the matter they may relent and actually provide this service as standard.
I did ask Lubob to document his experiences here for reference, not sure if he has done so yet or not. I might add something on my blog - certainly will be worth documenting if several people are successful in this regard.
Best of luck,
Wayne.
