LPE/Judges Demand Final Warning Letter

everton2111

Hi all,
I posted a while ago about receiving a "charge" from Legal Parking Enforcers. Since then I have received aprrox 5 letters. The last 3 have been from "Judges Demand". The lastest one from them states
"Outstanding Balance: £141.60.
As a result of this we are now instructed to issue legal proceedings against you, obtain a County Court Judgement and enforce the same.
This will have a detrimental effect on your credit file for at least 6 years and may result in your personal assets being frozen and repossessed in order to clear the debts owed to your Creditors.
This is your final opportunity to avoid this action being taken against you.!
We will not contact you again regarding this matter. We will issue the above proceedings if we do not receive payment on or before (time & date)

I took this letter to the police station today and he seemed to think I do have to pay it?! Didn't give me much confidence in my action so far of completeley ignoring them. He told me to go to the citizens advice bureau to see what they say. But I only have 4 days until they expect this payment and then I'll be receiving something else. I do not want to end up in court. Sorry to annoy anyone if I'm repeating myself but I didn't get the piece of mind I expected from the police and I found a list of scam companies on here but no sign of these LPE guys on there. Knowing my luck I'll be the one to end up in court.
I know just by the names of the companies are laughable but I'm still unsure.
Many thanks to all those who reply!

Sirdan

everton2111 wrote: »

Hi all,
I posted a while ago about receiving a "charge" from Legal Parking Enforcers. Since then I have received aprrox 5 letters. The last 3 have been from "Judges Demand". The lastest one from them states
"Outstanding Balance: £141.60.
As a result of this we are now instructed to issue legal proceedings against you, obtain a County Court Judgement and enforce the same.
This will have a detrimental effect on your credit file for at least 6 years and may result in your personal assets being frozen and repossessed in order to clear the debts owed to your Creditors.
This is your final opportunity to avoid this action being taken against you.!
We will not contact you again regarding this matter. We will issue the above proceedings if we do not receive payment on or before (time & date)

I took this letter to the police station today and he seemed to think I do have to pay it?! Didn't give me much confidence in my action so far of completeley ignoring them. He told me to go to the citizens advice bureau to see what they say. But I only have 4 days until they expect this payment and then I'll be receiving something else. I do not want to end up in court. Sorry to annoy anyone if I'm repeating myself but I didn't get the piece of mind I expected from the police and I found a list of scam companies on here but no sign of these LPE guys on there. Knowing my luck I'll be the one to end up in court.
I know just by the names of the companies are laughable but I'm still unsure.
Many thanks to all those who reply!

LPE are very well known for extra reassurance post your concern here

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=60

(You will need to register).

LPE and JD unlike other PPCs draw no distinction between the words "will" and "may".

Most PPCs use the word "may" in order to get around any charge of "misleading business practice" which is forbidden by the Office of Fair trading...this is because they 99.9999999999999999% of the time do not do court.

LPE and JD however don't seem to care that they are delibearately misleading you by saying "will" when what they mean is "may when hell freezes over".

Ignore them...if a real stamped County Court Claim arrives apart from buying a lottery ticket as you are blessed , pop back here or pepipoo for advice ....we won't be holding out breath though :rotfl:

PS As this is a civil matter it has nothing to do with the Police and they should not be giving you advice either way AND ignore any advice the CAB give as it is WRONG ..sadly they have fallen for the PPC con and their advice appears to have been scripted by the BPA !

Coupon-mad

everton2111 wrote: »

Hi all,
I posted a while ago about receiving a "charge" from Legal Parking Enforcers. Since then I have received aprrox 5 letters. The last 3 have been from "Judges Demand". The lastest one from them states
"Outstanding Balance: £141.60.
As a result of this we are now instructed to issue legal proceedings against you, obtain a County Court Judgement and enforce the same.
This will have a detrimental effect on your credit file for at least 6 years and may result in your personal assets being frozen and repossessed in order to clear the debts owed to your Creditors.
This is your final opportunity to avoid this action being taken against you.!
We will not contact you again regarding this matter. We will issue the above proceedings if we do not receive payment on or before (time & date)

I took this letter to the police station today and he seemed to think I do have to pay it?! Didn't give me much confidence in my action so far of completeley ignoring them. He told me to go to the citizens advice bureau to see what they say. But I only have 4 days until they expect this payment and then I'll be receiving something else. I do not want to end up in court. Sorry to annoy anyone if I'm repeating myself but I didn't get the piece of mind I expected from the police and I found a list of scam companies on here but no sign of these LPE guys on there. Knowing my luck I'll be the one to end up in court.
I know just by the names of the companies are laughable but I'm still unsure.
Many thanks to all those who reply!

Once a scam, always a scam.

Do not expect the Police to know about it - after all the Police have been blind for so long to the offences committed by clampers and dismissed it all as a 'civil matter'. It has got so bad that the Govt are now banning clamping and one of the reasons was 'because the Police were not acting'. So they are hardly going to be up on the finer points of the PPC 'fake PCN scam' are they?

That desk copper (civilian possibly) was an idiot I am afraid. He should not be commenting on whether you 'have to pay' a scam like this one. They never have a clue and sadly CAB are usually just as bad so do not even try to go there or they will worry you even more with their duff advice.

PLease stand firm and keep ignoring the letters - you are near the end. We have had people posting about this company before (Google them and look at forum results).

No-one has gone to Court with LPE (Google 'Judge's Demand' as well, you will see that it is a made up scam name to scare people, based on the fact that it's run by someone with the surname Judge!).

Inflatable_Armadillo

The number of people who are 'unlucky' (in your words) that end up in court are very, very, very few and far between and certainly you genuinely have more chance of winning the lottery than ending up in court. This is not how the business model for PPC's works... simple as!

So, lets turn the lottery analogy around to demonstrate how foolish you would be paying these clowns.

So, I put 10,000 numbers in a bag and give you one of the matching numbers. You win if you DON'T pull out that single number I have given you. So, you have a 9,999 to 10,000 chance of winning and I only have a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning, what would you do?

Worth a punt I reckon... what do you think?

peter_the_piper

Another way of looking at it is--if they took many to court and won they would give a long list just to frighten you, instead all they have available to trot out is good old Thomas (and that was in 2008), and that's widely thought to be a set up.

jaddie_2

everton2111 wrote: »

Hi all,
I posted a while ago about receiving a "charge" from Legal Parking Enforcers. Since then I have received aprrox 5 letters. The last 3 have been from "Judges Demand". The lastest one from them states
"Outstanding Balance: £141.60.
As a result of this we are now instructed to issue legal proceedings against you, obtain a County Court Judgement and enforce the same.
This will have a detrimental effect on your credit file for at least 6 years and may result in your personal assets being frozen and repossessed in order to clear the debts owed to your Creditors.
This is your final opportunity to avoid this action being taken against you.!
We will not contact you again regarding this matter. We will issue the above proceedings if we do not receive payment on or before (time & date)

I took this letter to the police station today and he seemed to think I do have to pay it?! Didn't give me much confidence in my action so far of completeley ignoring them. He told me to go to the citizens advice bureau to see what they say. But I only have 4 days until they expect this payment and then I'll be receiving something else. I do not want to end up in court. Sorry to annoy anyone if I'm repeating myself but I didn't get the piece of mind I expected from the police and I found a list of scam companies on here but no sign of these LPE guys on there. Knowing my luck I'll be the one to end up in court.
I know just by the names of the companies are laughable but I'm still unsure.
Many thanks to all those who reply!

Hi, I'm just wondering what happened in the end? Did they give up on pursuing this matter? I've just got a LPE ticket as well and would like to get some advice about it. Thank you.

Coupon-mad

Of course nothing happened, that's what almost every thread on the forum is about. Have you read the second to top sticky thread called 'PPC letters & threats' with the letter previews and the Watchdog clip?

It's easy to ignore this scam. It's not a fine and the letters are just templates. Nothing else happens and they cannot affect your credit rating without winning in Court first (see the Watchdog clip). My signature explains how to get back to the whole forum index, all the parking threads are then shown and it's only one click away.

Almost everyone here has ignored a fake PCN or twenty, me included. It's no biggie, just like deleting a series of obvious phishing emails.

Stephen_Leak

jaddie wrote: »

Hi, I'm just wondering what happened in the end? Did they give up on pursuing this matter? I've just got a LPE ticket as well and would like to get some advice about it. Thank you.

It looks like it. It looks like it's your turn now.

Firstly, the legal stuff.

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 the driver in the first place. (The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997.)

Even if there is a contract, all the car park owner can claim from the driver in damages for any breach of contract is what they’ve lost as a result. If this is a free car park or they paid, this is £0.00. By asking you for more, which is unreasonable, it’s become an unfair contract penalty, which is legally unenforceable. (Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co. Ltd. vs. New Garage & Motor Co. Ltd., House of Lords, 1914.)

Only councils, the police and Transport for London can impose legally enforceable fines or penalties. Private companies can't.

Despite all of this, private parking companies consider that their signs create a fair and legally binding deemed contract between the car park owner and the driver, that their demands are their losses and not fines or penalties, that these are reasonable, and that they’re legally enforceable.

What do you do?

Don’t appeal. They always reject them. What’s in it for them to let anyone off?

What’s in it for them is information. With windscreen tickets, you’ll tell them your name and address, and maybe who was driving at the time. If you don’t, they have to buy the registered keeper details from the DVLA for £2.50.

If you’ve received a letter in the post, they’ve done this already. However, they still 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. 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 appealed and confirmed who the driver was, it doesn’t make their actions any less unlawful. It just means that instead of unlawfully harassing the wrong person, they can now unlawfully harass the right person.

What will happen now?

You are going to receive a series of letters from the PPC, then a debt collector and then a solicitor. The debt collector and solicitor are usually also the PPC, but using different headed paper. These will threaten you with all sorts of financial and legal unpleasantness, to try and intimidate you into paying. But, they can't actually do anything, for the same reason that a blackmailer couldn't sue their victim if they didn’t pay.

What should you do?

Ignore their empty threats. Eventually, they will run out of things to intimidate you with, and stop throwing good money after bad.

give_them_FA

Of course they gave up, jaddie. They always do. I have had over 80 of these sham tickets and each and every one has given up. They will with you, too.

You don't think they would go around making lurid threats if they had some legitimate way of enforcing their fake tickets- do you?

Scaring you into paying is the only weapon they have. Realise that, and laugh at their asinine letters.

bondy_lad

jaddie,,its simple,, you have recieved a PARKING charge notice=not legit/scam/con/fiddle and MUST NOT be paid as nothing can/will be done to you it equates to loo paper so when you have finished doing what you usually do with loo paper simply PRESS FLUSH and forget,,the genuine article is called a PENALTY charge notice=legit,issued by police or traffic warden,must be paid,you dont have this so worry not, and jobs a good un,,incidentally totally ignore any threat o grams you get, from or on behalf of these cowboys as they are all part of the scam,nothing will happen IGNORE.

AlexisV

Numerous breaches of the OFT debt collection guidelines.

I would photocopy everything and send it with a copy of the OFT regs: http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/OFT664Rev.pdf

Post to your local Trading Standards and the office nearest to the company.

They get away with it because nobody complains.