G24 Ltd using debt recovery agency

Oopsadaisy

Why bother with all this contacting and emailing and phoning these scum....simply ignore.

Please everyone...never bother contacting the scum, "ignore, ignore, ignore some more" really does work.

HardWorker2010_2

Your only action upon receipt of PPC scamograms is to remember the following image:

P9uma

Its been over a year since I last posted on thie thread. Just thought I would update you all on what happened after I ignored the seven letters that G24, and their namesakes sent me...


[Cue ominous music]

June the 30th, 2012, was much like any other summer's day in Bicester, and I, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on my way home as usual when, --- [dadum!] Nothing happened! [dumdum da dum] Scarcely able to believe my eyes, I looked down for the post. But one glance confirmed my suspicions. Behind a bush, on the side of the road, there was no collection agent.No disfigured arm of a man in his late fifties pointing a camera at me. No summons in a bag. Nothing. Not a sausage. For me, it was not to be the start of any trail of events which would not, in no time at all, involve me in neither a tangled knot of suspicion, nor any web of lies, which would, had I been not involved, surely have led me to no other place, than the small claims court.

My wife, a sharp-eyed, clever young girl, who had been with me for 11years,couldn't help noticing the complete absence of tiny but tell-tale stress lines on my forhead. Nor did she notice anything strange in my behaviour that whole morning. Nor the next morning. Nor at any time before or since the entire period she had known me.

But for the lack of any untold circumstances for my wife to notice, and for my total non-involvement in anything illegal, the forweight of the law would insure that I, P9uma, would have ended up like all who challenge the fundamental laws of our society. In an iron coffin with spikes on the inside

With apologies to Monty Python

So bin the letters and ignore them.

Oopsadaisy

Brilliant!!!!!!!

ManxRed

Ha ha, I'm old enough to remember that Python sketch.

MFox92

Hi i received a similar letter last week saying i had parked for longer than 6 hours in june this year. I am now being charged £95 or £75 if i pay within 14 days.

i have read all the threads and noticed most of these incidents date back a year or two ago.

have there been any rule changes since then? would you still suggest i dont pay the fine and ignore the letter??

ManxRed

There hasn't been a significant change to English contract law for centuries. The advice still stands.

MFox92

okay thanks for you help everyone!

just spoke to some one from freeport and they said unless I have a receipt from anywhere in freeport then I HAVE to pay the fine.. unfortunately my date paid cash for the meal and never keeps his receipts. looks like im going to have to cough up the £95

Trebor16

MFox92 wrote: »

okay thanks for you help everyone!

just spoke to some one from freeport and they said unless I have a receipt from anywhere in freeport then I HAVE to pay the fine.. unfortunately my date paid cash for the meal and never keeps his receipts. looks like im going to have to cough up the £95

No you are not, you don't have to give them a penny. You went there, paid for a meal and then left.

Stephen_Leak

What's in it for them to let you off? And it's not a fine.

Firstly, the legal stuff.

Only councils, the police, train operators and Transport for London can impose legally enforceable fines or penalties. A private company or individual can't. A private parking company (PPC) call their tickets “Parking Charge Notices”, not “Penalty Charge Notices”. In law, they’re called “speculative invoices”.

Any warning signs are usually so badly positioned and worded, that they won’t have created a fair and legally binding deemed contract between the car park owner and a driver entering the car park in the first place. See The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997 and Excel Parking Services vs. Cutts, Stockport, 2011.

All the car park owner (CPO) can claim from a driver in damages for any breach of contract is what they’ve lost as a result. If it’s in a free car park or the driver paid, this is £0.00. Demanding more has been judged to be unreasonable and therefore an unfair contract penalty under the terms of The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997, which is not legally enforceable. See Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co. Ltd. vs. New Garage & Motor Co. Ltd., House of Lords, 1914 and countless cases since.

There are also now two recent landmark court cases, VCS Parking Control vs. Ronald Ibbotson, S!!!!horpe, 2012 and VCS Parking Control vs. HM Revenue & Customs, Upper Tax Tribunal, 2012. In both cases, the judges found that only the car park owner can take drivers to court. The Upper Tax Tribunal is a court of record, equivalent to the High Court, and therefore its judgement sets a legal precedent.

What should I do now?

We don’t condone not paying or overstaying in a pay car park. If you owe the CPO the original charge, then you ought to write to the CPO, offering this in “full and final settlement”. In any event, you should write to the CPO, advising them that they are "jointly and severally liable" for the actions of their agents, the PPC, and that any further actions by either of them would be regarded as harassment under the terms of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This should make the CPO call off the PPC and, hopefully, realise the potential cost of doing business with a PPC.

Don’t appeal to the PPC. They always reject them. What’s in it for them to let anyone off? Actually, there is something in it for them: information. They need to know the identity of the driver of the vehicle involved at the time, because that’s who the alleged contract was with. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to make do with chasing the registered keeper.

With windscreen notices, an appeal letter will tell them your name and address, and maybe who was driving at the time. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to buy the details of registered keeper from the DVLA. With postal notices, they’ve done this already. But they still need to know the identity of the driver.

They sometimes say that they have the right to ask for this information. This doesn’t mean that you have to tell them.

However, even if you’ve written and told them who the driver was, it doesn’t make their actions any less unlawful. It just means that instead of harassing the registered keeper, they can now harass the driver.

What will they do to me?

The PPC, then a debt collector and then a solicitor will send you a series of letters. The debt collector and solicitor are usually also the PPC, but using different headed paper. These letters will threaten you with every kind of financial and legal unpleasantness imaginable to intimidate you into paying.

But, they can't actually do anything, for the same reason that a Nigerian e-mail scammer couldn't sue anyone who didn’t pay them.

What should I do then?

Continue to ignore everything you get from the PPC and their aliases. It does seem counter-intuitive to deal with something by ignoring it. Eventually, they will run out of empty threats, and stop throwing good money after bad.