PCN - Correct parking Charge paid!, ANPR car park Options

[Macapaca]

The driver paid the correct fee of 50p to stay for up to 1 hour. The PCN notice correctly identified that the car was parked for less than half that time. The registration number was correctly entered and checked on the machine display before the Validate button was hit. The machine display confirmed that the fee had been paid. Unfortunately the pay machine did not issue a receipt. The company in question are just using photographic evIdence that the car was parked. They have not supplied any evidence that payment was not made. As the RK I appealed and asked for visibility of the payment machine log to show that the registration and payment was made. They have refused to supply that information.

So I am determined to fight this unjust charge of £100 when in good faith the correct parking fee of 50p was paid and met all the parking contractual requirements stated on the car park notices.

The initial appeal to the PPC has been rejected and I have now received a POPLA code. I would like advice on whether to submit a POPLA appeal or just ignore all letters except for a court case should it come to that. I am determined to fight this unjust PCN and will happily go to court to fight my case.

Any experienced and wise advice is welcome.

This post has been edited by Macapaca: Wed, 11 Oct 2017 - 16:14

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[kommando]

Its a number game, provided enough people fold and pay after seeing a claim then losing a few to properly motivated and prepared defendants is acceptable. Its just a way of applying pressure and a type of debt collection.

[nosferatu1001]

As above
Behaving unreasonably doesnt mean they wont win, either.
It's literally a numbers game...

[Macapaca]

So after sending a long letter to the PPC in response to their letter, which I assumed to be a letter before action (LBA), I have now received a solicitors letter. It is now five weeks since i sent my letter to the PPC giving them 14 days to reply in full otherwise I would assume that they did not wish to proceed on accordance with the PAP. My letter has not even been acknowledged. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. The solicitors letter now gives me 14 days to pay £100 to the PPC with the threat of potential court action if I don't.

The letter does not have a title so it is not clear if this is just a standard debt recovery letter or effectively a more formal LBA. If it is meant to be a more formal LBA then it does not state so and certain lyndsey doesn't contain all the detail required by the PAP.

I am certainly not going to respond by sending £100 to the PPC!

Any thoughts or advice on how I should treat this letter?

[ostell]

If you are unsure of the letter then post it up for comment.

[Macapaca]

The letter only states debt recovery on behalf of Premier Park and does not say anything explicitly about being a LBA or following the PAP. It is identical to ones I have seen in various places from SCS Law. It appears to be just a standard brief letter. I am not familiar with how to post a redacted version but I will do so if I can work out how to do so.


This post has been edited by Macapaca: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 - 23:45

[Redivi]

My personal view is that letters from solicitors should receive a reply

In the event of a claim, a court could regard failure to reply as unreasonable and won't make a distinction between a debt collector style letter and a Letter Before Claim

I would keep the reply very simple

Dear Sir

Ref ****

I have received your letter dated ***

I deny any debt to Premier Park and refer you to my previous correspondence with your client

Yours Faithfully

SCS can't complain about the reply
If it was genuinely acting as a solicitor, it would already have a copy of the correspondence

I wouldn't waste time with Companies House
It doesn't take any action for failures to include legally required information

You can use it to advantage later to justify your brief response
SCS didn't identify itself and, as you had already adequately explained why you disputed the debt, you provided no more information than a genuine solicitor would already possess

[Macapaca]

The letter is titled Re: Debt owed to Premier Park Ltd

The letter also states 'At this stage please contact Premier Park Ltd on tel. no or pcnpayments.com'.

So it appears that it is a plain debt recovery letter. All they have done is change the name address on a standard template letter. PP appear to have paid the minimum amount to send a vanilla threatening solicitors letter presumably hoping that will do the trick and I will cave in and pay, which I won't.

My previous letter to PP did make it clear that I wouldn't respond to letters from their DRA. I haven't received any to ignore so maybe they took that onboard but thought that I may be spooked by a solicitors letter instead?

[ostell]

Premier have probably "borrowed" the letterhead from the solicitor and the solicitor knows nothing about it.

You could write to them and require a response within 14 days

This post has been edited by ostell: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 - 10:41

[nosferatu1001]

Write to the sol, and require a response within 14 days, asking if the letter was issued by them
State that lack of a response will be taken as confirmaiton that the letter was counterfeit, and can be ignored OR reported to trading standards as an attempt to fraudulently obtain money.

[Macapaca]

Great advice ostell and nosferatu! Thanks guys. I was unsure whether to respond directly or ignore but you have given me good amunition to reply. I thought it was suspicious that the letter said to reply to PP rather than the solicitors. If the solicitor was really dealing with it now then surely they would expect any response. I also thought that if I send a letter to the solicitors and they are genuinely dealing with it then it will incur additional charges for PP further reducing their appetite to continue.

[Macapaca]

I should have added that I actually received two almost identical letters four days apart. The second letter stated that I should disregard the first one. The only difference was that the first one had the wrong car park! I think it just emphasises that the letter was just a copy and paste from a well used template.

Anyway I have now sent a letter to SCS Law as per the advice in this thread. The PPC now needs to get off the potty and decide if they are going to proceed to Court action or not.

[Macapaca]

It is now 5 weeks since I sent a letter to SCS Law giving them 14 days to reply. The silence has so far been deafening. As per the advice I included the following;

The lack of a response will be taken as confirmation that the letter was counterfeit and can be ignored and reported to trading standards as an attempt to fraudulently obtain money.


I would appreciate advice on whether I should just be pleased that the PPC is seemingly not taking this further or should I take action to follow this up as a potential fraud case?

[Umkomaas]

It is now 5 weeks since I sent a letter to SCS Law giving them 14 days to reply. The silence has so far been deafening. As per the advice I included the following;

The lack of a response will be taken as confirmation that the letter was counterfeit and can be ignored and reported to trading standards as an attempt to fraudulently obtain money.


I would appreciate advice on whether I should just be pleased that the PPC is seemingly not taking this further or should I take action to follow this up as a potential fraud case?

You shouldn't threaten anything unless you are prepared to see it through. No harm in reporting this to TS - copy PP and SCS in. It's another sign to them both that you are not low-hanging fruit, ripe for picking.

[Redivi]

Much too soon to assume that Premier has dropped the case

Delays of four months or even years are common

I would personally not send copies of a Trading Standards complaint to PP and SCS

At the moment they probably think you're bluffing so any contact from TS will come as a surprise

Reporting without warning still enables you to use a "Trading Standards is investigating you" response to any further demands
It also leaves the possibility to report PP and SCS to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority if TS won't get involved

[Macapaca]

I am certainly not bluffing. On a completely separate issue I am underway with a formal complaint to the Financial Ombudsman, which they have followed up with the company concerned. So I am certainly prepared to take whatever action is necessary or appropriate. My question was really just seeking some wise advice on tactics and timing.

This post has been edited by Macapaca: Sat, 24 Mar 2018 - 08:46

[Umkomaas]

I would personally not send copies of a Trading Standards complaint to PP and SCS

At the moment they probably think you're bluffing so any contact from TS will come as a surprise

Having read and understood Redivi's reasoning above, please follow that. Keep some of your powder dry.

[Macapaca]

The brief history is that the PCN was issued for an ANPR car park run by Premier Park. The correct parking fee was paid and there was no overstay. The issue was that the pay machine did not issue a receipt. It went to POPLA but the appeal was not upheld. It went to LBA stage and PP used SCS Law. The LBA was completely inadequate and I refused to proceed until they sent a fully compliant LBA. They went quite for over 15 months until today when I received a new letter from BW Legal who have not been involved until now.

It appears like PP/ SCS Law may have given up and sold the alleged debt to BW Legal? The letter from them indicates that they have not read any of the previous correspondence! They are also throwing in a claim for £60 initial legal costs for good measure.

My question really is whether anybody has any recent experience of dealing with BW Legal? On the one hand I am inclined to ignore the letter as it is essentially a debt collection speculative letter. On the other hand I am thinking thay I should respond pointing out the errors in the letter e.g. it states that the original PCN was never appealed which is incorrect. If I did respond then I would make it clear that I would not enter into any further correspondence short of a formal LBA.

[Umkomaas]

It appears like PP/ SCS Law may have given up and sold the alleged debt to BW Legal?

BWL don’t buy any debt (alleged or otherwise). They have taken over a portfolio of unpaid parking charges from the likes of NCP, Britannia and Premier Parking. I offer this information over on MSE.

Read the following thread. Your can learn how to bat off their advances and work to get them to capitulate.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showth...d.php?t=5999048

BRITANNIA or NCP or PREMIER PARKING / BW LEGAL CASES

As you will see from the first few pages of the forum, there is an onslaught by BWL on behalf of Britannia or NCP (and a few other hitherto court-shy PPCs) which is being conducted on an industrial scale - roboclaims.

You are caught in a one-way traffic flow where you must fight or pay - there is no longer a safe 'do nothing' option.

1. Pay now, it costs you exactly what they are currently demanding.
2. Ignore it, a 'judgment in default' will inevitably follow for at least what they want - maybe with even more costs added; continue to ignore that, you're getting a CCJ with credit crushing consequences for 6 years.
3. Defend, yet lose in court, the cost award is likely to be noticeably less than their current demand ~£175.
4. Defend, and win in court, you owe them nothing and you could claim up to £95 for half a day's pay/loss of annual leave, plus travel costs @45p per mile, plus your parking cost for the day.

Your least costly option has to be 3, with hopefully a win as per 4.

But BWL/Britannia or NCP cannot physically take everyone to court, and there is evidence to show that with a well constructed defence, BWL can come along with a reduced 'offer to settle', which if refused, becomes a discontinuation. We can't give you guarantees on that, but as you have little choice other than to defend (if you don't want to pay), you need to give this your very best shot.

Whether you have a good defendable case to argue, you will need to read other similar cases at the defence (or beyond) stage and learn from those.

ROBOCLAIMS - HOW BWL OPERATE

You might find it useful to understand how BWL operate - as I have surmised from the hundreds of different threads I've read involving BWL.

Other than the auto acknowledgements and template letters, you will get nothing sensible from BWL - they are dealing with literally hundreds of thousands of unpaid parking charges and are spewing out various threatening letters, using a conveyor belt approach to go through a computer controlled process towards a LBC, and a MCOL Claim - and it is really only at the final stages, as a court hearing becomes a possibility, that there's any real human intervention.

You need to understand that you're not dealing with an old fashioned firm of solicitors, just progressing from a quill and ink operation, BWL are industrial harvesters of debt, using the equivalent of massive farming machinery to do their work. This is what their website tells you:

A multi-award winning law firm specialising in volume collections, across both regulated and unregulated sectors, who are dual regulated through the FCA and SRA.

We employ around 265 people at our Leeds based office which in turn makes us the largest privately owned debt collection law firm in the UK.

This post has been edited by Umkomaas: Sun, 12 May 2019 - 20:28

[Macapaca]

Just a quick update on this case for anyone interested in Premier Park PCNs and their debt collectors BW Legal. I sent a firm reply to BWL to make it clear that they had clearly not read any of the previous correspondence. The implication was that they probably didn't even have it. I specifically pointed out that PP did not respond to my last letter to them in Jan 18 and to their alleged solicitors SCS Law in Feb 18. Those letters included a request for a fully compliant LBA.

To my surprise my letter to BWL appears to have been read by a human being. BWL's response is actually a fairly polite letter saying that my points have been noted and that they have put the case on hold whilst they seek advice from their client PP. Interesting given that the first letter from from BWL included a letter from PP saying that the case has been passed to their legal team, BWL, and that all future correspondence will be with them. That PP letter looked a bit suspicious as it was on what appeared to be PP photo-copied letter headed paper. So in conclusion this doesn't appear to be locked in a robo-process as suggested by a previous post. I await their next move with interest.

This post has been edited by Macapaca: Sun, 26 May 2019 - 10:29

[ostell]

If they can they leave it in the roboclaim process. If they get a rejection that forces them out of roboclaim then they have to respond.