Reclaiming car clamping charges

anupampaul

I recently had the unfortunate experience of having my car clamped. I parked my car close to a venue to pick up a disabled relative of mine. My car was clamped at 10:54 pm and within 10 minutes we were back to the parking. They charged £125 for unclamping the car, another £95 for ‘cancellation of removal’ and £5 for paying by credit card. It seems to me that the clampers came to the scene with the towing vehicle. When I approached the clampers, I was threatened that if I did not pay up immediately, they are going to tow my vehicle and I would have to pay even more!

There are 3 things that I am concerned about:

1. The charges seem to be far from reasonable, in fact exorbitant. In particular, the ‘cancellation of removal’ charge appears to be a total rip off!
2. I am suspicious that the shinny sign that the clampers pointed to, located just behind my car ‘DID NOT EXIST’ when I parked my car.
3. There are websites (e.g. ‘beat wheelclamps.com’) that claim that using their template letter would help me get a refund with 100% guarantee. They charge £15 for the letter. Does any one have any experience of using such a website? Is this true or another rip off?

Please help!!!

peter_the_piper

Did you pay credit/visa debit card? If so there's the chargeback route.
As you are in doubt about the sign, have you been back to see if its still there or do they carry it with them to put up when necessary to con a driver? Take pics of the area and where you were parked. It is quite likely you will have to go down the moneyclaims route to get your money back, suing both clamper and landowner, hence the photo's.
General concensus is that the template letter is probably not worth the money.

bargepole

anupampaul wrote: »

... There are websites (e.g. ‘beat wheelclamps.com’) that claim that using their template letter would help me get a refund with 100% guarantee. They charge £15 for the letter ... Is this true or another rip off?

Writing a letter to the clampers would be a 100% guarantee that they'll ignore it, and have a good laugh.

You need to find out the name of the landowner, which you can get from the Land Registry for a small fee, and send a 14-day Letter Before Action to both the landowner and clampers, stating that unless their extortionate and unjustified fee is refunded, you will make a county court claim. You'll find free examples of such letters on the parking forums at www.pepipoo.com

If that doesn't get a satisfactory response, submit a claim using moneyclaim online, naming both landowner and clampers as joint defendants, which will cost £30 but is added to the claim, and in most cases you'll find they won't defend it, so judgement will go in your favour. It's then up to you to ask the court to enforce judgement, which they are far more likely to get from the landowner than the clampers.

farnott

bargepole wrote: »

send a 14-day Letter Before Action to both the landowner and clampers, stating that unless their extortionate and unjustified fee is refunded, you will make a county court claim. You'll find free examples of such letters on the parking forums at pepipoo

I've been searching for a 14-day Letter Before Action template but can't find one, even on pepipoo - does anyone have a link to one please?

peter_the_piper

pepipoo and here don't do templates as every case is different. You will see a fair few cases like yours and there are letters on there which they sent. Just copy there and correct them to reflect your own circumstances. Post your circumstances on there and they will fine tune it for you.

farnott

ahh ok, that's great - thanks for your reply!