Nasty letter / Final Demand from Debt Recovery

Hi all,

Usually I would send off my response with confidence, but wondered if I could post the contents of a letter I received this morning regarding an old parking ticket.

From: Stirling Park Debt Recovery

FINAL DEMAND

Balance due £90
Glasgow City Council Land Services (Parking)

This debt relates to a Penalty Charge under the Road Traffic Act 1991, whereby a Charge Certificate has been issued by Glasgow City Council Land Services (Parking). This has the same status as an extract registered decree arbitral bearing a warrant for execution and contains authority for immediate enforcement by officers of the court.

A Sheriff Officer will be instructed to call and serve a Charge for Payment of Money or an Arrestment of your bank account, which will incur an additional legal fee due by you. To avoid this action payment of the full balance or contact must be made to our office on XXXXXXXX immediately.

Lots of love xx Debt Creeps

Now, the good :eek: news is that I didn't ignore the original ticket, or the follow up letter from the council or the first letter from Stirling Park. I have copies of them all. I wrote to the council asking for extended time to pay given my financial circumstances. They ignored it and sent out the doubled fee for payment over 14 days from ticket. I wrote to them again offering a repayment schedule, again they ignored it. I received a letter from Stirling Park and replied as below.

I refer to your correspondence dated 28 May 2009. We can not afford to pay the amount due because at present, we are experiencing extreme financial hardship like many within the present economic climate. We have now approached a non-profit organisation for advice regarding a debt management programme in order to clear our debts. Regrettably, we are finding it impossible to pay the outstanding amount of £90. We have taken advice from National Debtline and been aided by CCCS in calculating pro-rata payments to all of our creditors, based on our available income for repayments. In order to repay our debt at a realistic and manageable amount which is currently expected to be around £1 per week.

I enclose a Personal Budget sheet which shows our total income from all sources, and our outgoings. As you can see we have only £86.12 per week left for our creditors. The offers we have made to our creditors have been calculated on a priority basis based on the total amount due, and we have written to all our creditors asking them to accept reduced payments. In view of our circumstances, we propose an offer of £1 per week. If interest or other charges are being added to the account we would be grateful if you would freeze these so that all payments made will reduce what I owe you.

Should our circumstances improve we will contact you again. I request details in order to commence a standing order instruction to reflect this amount in order that we may commence our repayments without delay.

I look forward to receiving your response, and thank you for your understanding in this matter to date.

Of course the creeps ignored us, and I've drafted a response to their final demand letter as below, just grateful for any comments or further action I should take before I send this off.

I refer to your FINAL DEMAND notice of 29th July 2009, received today 3rd August 2009. It is with pleasure that I enclose a copy of our response to your letter of 28th May 2009, which you have clearly chosen to ignore.

Our letter clearly lays out our financial situation, and we have offered a repayment schedule as calculated on a pro-rata basis, used by the county courts. Rather than threaten us with further action, perhaps you could respond to our only affordable offer of repayment. We are committed to repaying this debt, however given our current circumstances we are unable to increase our offer any further. We believe that we have taken appropriate steps to address our debts by writing to all creditors making them aware of our situation, and taking professional FREE advice to calculate a manageable and realistic budget for repayment of our debts.

It is my specific request that all communication is made in writing. This ensures that I can maintain accurate records should this debt become the subject of legal proceedings.