Chiltern / Met / Roxburghe

4consumerrights

Yes send the letter which Daisy wrote as per the thread given.

MET will cave in with a forum aided appeal .....as they have done many times and all the winning appeal points if you can get a POPLA code.

This is NOT A FINE though - just an invoice ....

Querym wrote: »

, I called Chiltern Railways customer services, they said talk to Met Parking, and Met Parking say it is 'now out of their hands'....this is just so infuriating!!

Chiltern are lying if they say they cannot do anything about it - they engaged the mis-management services of MET!

Waste of time though to phone MET - sorry ......they are only interested in getting your money.

prjohnsonnn10

ermmmmm.............

querym - i would certainly not refer to gpeol as 'that trick'........... its really a very simple of met and other ppc's obtaining money under false pretences. as regards your comment on being 'play by the truth people'.............well we all are and you dont need to do anything special here . just represent yourself and tell the truth like the rest of us and the money wont be scammed from you.
peter

simples

Querym

Thanks Peter, first foray into this minefield can be a bit daunting for us newbies, and it can seem like we are having to pull tricks out of the bag just to avoid their unjust demands, so it's reassuring to hear it put like that! I had seen other posts while searching the threads, with suggestions they were pretending correspondence had not arrived or not admitting they were the etc, but I agree wholeheartedly, the truth should simply be enough. Well I sure do hope it is! Thank you.

Querym

Thought this had gone away, but today we have received two demands from a Debt Recovery agency, whom having rung them, have said they are passing it on to MET solicitors (whomever they may be), because there was no POPLA code requested, so it is not a POPLA matter. We disputed the charge and the nature of the Roxburghe letter per the above discussions, and invited them to use POPLA stating we were happy to abide by any decision they might make...and no reply at all until today?! Any ideas? Have they just given up and passed all their, no doubt mounting pile of unpaid fines?!

bod1467

NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER phone a debt collector. EVER!

bazster

You 'phoned a debt collector? :wall:

If Gladstone's are going to take you to court why is another debt collector contacting you? (hint: it never was Gladstone's, it was just Poxburghe pretending to be Gladstone's, and now Poxburghe has gone bust).

Just ignore everything unless you get a real letter before claim from a solicitor or MET.

Querym

Apologies for the naivety with this, apart from it being a head bangingly futile thing to do, does it make anything worse? I rang them just to say we would not be paying...thought not responding was a less right thing to do?? I know they have no super powers beyond sending us their cocky demands, but what else can they do? Other than pass it up to the 'next stage' of course. And will they actually do this?? It's been six months since we replied to the Roxburghe letters, so seems a long time to suddenly resurrect the whole thing!

Coupon-mad

Querym wrote: »

Thought this had gone away, but today we have received two demands from a Debt Recovery agency, whom having rung them, have said they are passing it on to MET solicitors (whomever they may be), because there was no POPLA code requested, so it is not a POPLA matter. We disputed the charge and the nature of the Roxburghe letter per the above discussions, and invited them to use POPLA stating we were happy to abide by any decision they might make...and no reply at all until today?! Any ideas? Have they just given up and passed all their, no doubt mounting pile of unpaid fines?!

Roxburghe have gone into administration so who did you ring? They aren't answering phones any more. Anyway, have you not been Googling stuff in the meantime?

http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/met-parking-deceive-motorists-for-years.html

''One motorist realised something fishy was happening after he had successfully appealed several tickets to the independent appeals service, POPLA. When he tried to appeal a subsequent ticket, MET Parking said they had withdrawn the right to use POPLA as the ticket was issued under the railway byelaws. The motorist pointed out that this was not what the original charge said, and has been fighting to find the true situation ever since.''

You do realise you never had to 'ask for POPLA' as long as you appealed? And that these are not 'fines' at all?

Back to square one - read the Newbies thread post #6 about complaints/BPA email and (having read the blog linked) email a complaint to the BPA about this farce.

Querym

Thanks Coupon-mad, the original demands came from Roxburghe, then we had the letters which were made to look like solicitor 'action' letters from Gladstones, but in fact were not, and we replied to them at the time, back in March this year. We had no response after that, and now we have received demands from a different debt collection agency, demanding payment within 7 days or they will pass on to MET's solicitors.


I think the problem we have is that when MET sent my husband the original appeal rejection letter, they may have provided a POPLA code, but of course he did nothing at the time due to circumstances at home, and then came the subsequent letters from Roxburghe, Gladstones etc., it was then I picked this up and decided to see what we could do, as I was so outraged that in spite of presenting his annual ticket, and in spite of it having been bought through the Chiltern railway office itself, and therefore having full record of the fact that he had a fully valid ticket for the entire year, he could be fined such a crazy sum of money for them simply not being able to see the ticket on that one particular day. It just seems so blatantly wrong.


So, am I right in assuming that we can no longer appeal to POPLA full stop? The window for appeal is only 28 days from what I can see, and now six months since their last illegitimate attempts to extort the money from us, we are seemingly back to where we started.

It is all such a tiring process, how on earth can law abiding people who are simply parking their car to go and make a living, with a fully paid up ticket, be subjected to this kind of money swindling behaviour, and have to trawl such a minefield of information and rules about what we can and cannot do, to simply defend our case, and probably in the end, will have to trump up anyway. Unbelievable

Umkomaas

It's too late now to appeal to POPLA. Debt collectors can be ignored, they cannot proceed any further than writing - irritating as they are - letters to you. The only documents that you should not ignore are LBCCC/LBA from MET or the train company or MCOL papers from the Northampton County Court bulk handling centre.

You haven't said who the new debt collectors are. Can you tell us please?

Why do you feel you'll 'have to trump up anyway'? There's only a small claims court that can place that on you, not a landowner, not a PPC and most certainly not a poxy debt collector.