Parking ticket on a car park after hours

Smith2992

Hi I am all new to this so please bear with me,
I received a parking ticket last November for parking on a public car park and not displaying a ticket at 00.10 hours, I returned to my car 20 minutes later to find a ticket on my windscreen Saying I had to pay £90 or if I paid within 28days it would be £55 for not displaying a ticket at that time. I chose to ignore it and received a letter to say I owed £90 and if it wasn't paid within 7 days I would have to pay £140
Which then I received a letter 3 weeks later to say I owe £140, now I have received a letter which is not very appealing from roxburghe debt collectors demanding I pay them £188 within 10 days and if not it will go to there solicitors graham white.
Has any body heard of these companies or does anybody no if this is a scam? Urgent responses please
Thank you

Stephen_Leak

For a start, it was a private, not a public car park. They were working at midnight? They must be getting desperate. Yes, we have heard of this private parking company (PPC) and their fake debt collector and solicitor aliases. Yes, it is a scam.

Did you buy a ticket? Even if you didn't, whilst we cannot condone not paying, the car park owner can only ask you for the cost of the ticket.

The legal bottom line is that only councils and the police can impose a fine or penalty. PPCs can't, no more than you or I could.

Ignore their letters.

Send both the car park owner and the PPC a standard legal letter, called a "Letter Before Action". They are "jointly and severally" liable. An LBA simply tells them to "cease & desist, or I'll sue you for harassment". Legally, you do have to put a warning shot across their bows. When the PPCs next letter arrives, do it. It's easy. We can tell you how.

Sueing the car park owner is the important part. It should make them think twice about employing a PPC.

give_them_FA

So you have made the acquaintance of the sham debt collector Roxburghe, and the phoney solicitor Graham White (that's rhyming slang, by the way: as in, "I'm just going for a Graham White")

The usual suspects, we call them.

Personally I would go along the route that Stephen suggests, turning the tables on these ineffective would-be scammers is good.

The alternative is just to continue to do what you have evidently been doing up to now and treating them with the contempt they richly deserve by ignoring their total BS.

The choice is yours and you are assured of support here whichever way you decide to go. If you decide to strike back, yes, giving the car park owner an unpleasant surprise may make them rethink the need to have a parasite infesting the park, so that is certainly good.

Smith2992

Thankyou both for your advice and help, I shall send both CMS and roxburghe an LBA letter and wait to see if I receive anymore letters is that correct?

Thanks again.

give_them_FA

How many letters have you actually received? And who owns the car park? It is rather unusual for any payment to be asked for that late. If you want to go down the route of suing them, then, to cover yourself, you should offer them a cheque for the amount which should have been paid to park. State that it is in full and final settlement and you will not entertain any claim for any unlawful penalty.

Stephen_Leak

Yes, very good advice about offering the cost as "full and final settlement". IF they ever took you to court, and WHEN you take them to court, it gives you the moral high ground. Judges love seeing this sort of thing.

Sorry for not mentioning it before.

Coupon-mad

Smith2992 wrote: »

Hi I am all new to this so please bear with me,
I received a parking ticket last November for parking on a public car park and not displaying a ticket at 00.10 hours, I returned to my car 20 minutes later to find a ticket on my windscreen Saying I had to pay £90 or if I paid within 28days it would be £55 for not displaying a ticket at that time. I chose to ignore it and received a letter to say I owed £90 and if it wasn't paid within 7 days I would have to pay £140
Which then I received a letter 3 weeks later to say I owe £140, now I have received a letter which is not very appealing from roxburghe debt collectors demanding I pay them £188 within 10 days and if not it will go to there solicitors graham white.
Has any body heard of these companies or does anybody no if this is a scam? Urgent responses please
Thank you

Nope, never heard of them...:p

Errrr...search the forum??? :rotfl:

Nozone

Well I can pretty much tell you the short term outcome - the registered keeper in my case (slightly different to yours, free car park) sent a warning to cease and desist or face a harassment suit. They simply sent a reply spouting some more legal guff (thanks to the guys on this forum).

Really, in my case they have not a leg to stand on or no recourse for a refusal to pay. They will simply send more begging letters. That's exactly what they are - begging - we've had around 5 'final warnings'.

These scammers, even if it ever went to court, would have an incredibly hard time succeeding. Think about it - if they could take people to court for the original charge (which I believe constitutes a penalty because it is so high), they could simply take people to court straight after the first letter, win, and claim £10000000 (if a court were to decide that £40 or whatever was reasonable and not a penalty, what the hell would the upper limit be?). They would just take this option of it had a good chance of success. As it stands they have to try and increase the pressure on you to pay by continually sending threatening letters.

give_them_FA

Sue them. If your RK sent them a warning and they have persisted, they are fruit ripe to be plucked.

As there isn't a real solicitor in their house, they won't know what to do with court proceedings and the only issue will be how much they will pay to get rid of you.

Smith2992

Right after sending LBA letters to the car parking owners (cms uk), graham white solicitors and roxburghe stating that by law only the police and the council can demand money for parking fines on private car parks not themselves in which then I went on to offer them as full and final settlement the cost of the car parking ticket at that time ( which was £2)
Roxburghe have sent me a reply in which says;

"Thanks for your recent correspondence, to confirm the terminology, this is not a penalty but a charge added in accordance to the terms and conditions advertised at the car park that our clients manage.

We note your comment regarding harassment but should inform you that as our client has a valid claim for payment for unauthorised parking, acting as the contracted managing agent for this site, they have every right under contract law to request payment of the outstanding debt.

Graham white solicitors are our 'in house' solicitors firm, with Mr Sobell as its principal solicitor. They are properly registered with the SRA no.

It is now necessary to settle the outstanding amount due above within the next 14 days to prevent any further action. If it becomes to redress through the small claims court, our client will produce further evidence of the incident and will request the parking attendant who issued the ticket to give evidance if required.

I trust that this explains the situation but if any other queries, please do not hesitate to contact us quoting your reference."

They have given a contact number for me to call but I haven't done so yet, I am just after any advice were to go from here please?

Thank you.

give_them_FA

They will send out mealymouthed garbage like that. It will be a VERY different story when you put them in the position of trying to foist that off on a County Court Judge. If you look carefully at what they have written it doesn't address any issues. And they will not want to stand up in court and be confronted by the letters they send out. So, they will offer to settle.

By the way the only time they have EVER been in a county court was the last time they were sued for harassment.

PM me if you want any help and I will give you my e mail addy.