2008 parking charge- legal advice - pay??

canalto2

I received an unpaid parking charge demand for a private carpark on 25/12/2008 from Excel Parking Services. I informed them I was not the driver and sent a number of letters back asking them to stop hassling me. I did not inform them who the driver was.
Heard nothing for five and a half years.

Received a demand from Debt Recovery Plus for £100 this week.
I phoned my Unite legal helpline and they suggested I pay it.

Does Driver Liability apply for 2008 charge dates?

Should I ignore and wait for court papers, or reply?

Hot_Bring

Shows what a bunch of morons Unite are then ( and to be honest, in all my dealings with Unite over many years I've never met a more incompetent trade union - why people pay them money is beyond me ).

As it's before POFA ( i.e. before October 2012 ) they need to know who the driver is to take it further and even then it can only be Excel not DRP. Of course you won't be telling them who the driver was.

It's a desperate last roll of the dice on their behalf as it times out at the end of the year.

Ignore them.

Dee140157

There is no keeper Liability before Oct 2012. They are just going over old PCNs and trying to get money out of people

You are safe to ignore. You may get a few more letters, but just put them in a pile and let them gather dust.

After December of this year the 6 years of time in which they can chase you is up anyway. Only a few more months to go.

In the meanwhile ring back whoever you spoke to at Unite and suggest they come and learn a bit about how it actually works from this forum. This was really bad advice. They should be able to protect their members better than this. I am shocked that they do not know the law! (But obviously they are less competent than I assumed from Hot Bring's post which crossed over with mine. )

The_Deep

Time for a bit of light relief

I was more than a little amused to receive your agents letter dated xxxx asking me to pay an absurd sum of money for a parking incident in which I had no involvement some five and a half years old.

As I told you at the time, I was not the driver, and that any contract which you may have formed with regard to your sordid little enterprise, was with that person.

However, if you think that I am a liar, and that you can convince a Country Court judge thusly, that on the balance of probabilities I was indeed the driver, by all means take me to court, otherwise I invite you to visit Arkell v Pressdram.

Redx

canalto2 wrote: »

I received an unpaid parking charge demand for a private carpark on 25/12/2008 from Excel Parking Services. I informed them I was not the driver and sent a number of letters back asking them to stop hassling me. I did not inform them who the driver was.
Heard nothing for five and a half years.

Received a demand from Debt Recovery Plus for £100 this week.
I phoned my Unite legal helpline and they suggested I pay it.

Does Driver Liability apply for 2008 charge dates?

Should I ignore and wait for court papers, or reply?

you and dozens of others with many replies recently on this forum

trawling old cases before the 6 years is up

ignore DRP

Stroma

Complain to ICO and the dvla for these companies misusing your data , they have no reasonable cause to keep your file for over 5 years. It's a dpa breach to do so.

Coupon-mad

I phoned my Unite legal helpline and they suggested I pay it.

Morons - some helpline! That's even more shocking than the scraping of the barrel in the DRP letter. Unite reckon you should just PAY when you get a debt collector letter about a charge that was never your liability and is almost 'statute barred' anyway?! Do they not know the difference between debt collectors and bailiffs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQHnn7URlBc&list=UUQc2BoJFVkyV-gMuf7g85aA

But we cover this 'Excel old PCN' issue every day at the moment - here was yesterday's one which was easy to find or search for rather than start a new thread:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5001672

and here are more collated by Umkomaas after a quick search:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/65875007#Comment_65875007

The forum search works very well and would find loads of cases like yours if you search for keywords like 'Excel 2008' or 'Excel 2009' etc. Advice remains the same.

spikyone

The_Deep wrote: »

Time for a bit of light relief

I was more than a little amused to receive your agents letter dated xxxx asking me to pay an absurd sum of money for a parking incident in which I had no involvement some five and a half years old.

As I told you at the time, I was not the driver, and that any contract which you may have formed with regard to your sordid little enterprise, was with that person.

However, if you think that I am a liar, and that you can convince a Country Court judge thusly, that on the balance of probabilities I was indeed the driver, by all means take me to court, otherwise I invite you to visit Arkell v Pressdram.

I'd go with a different approach...

"Dear Excel,

Thank you for the letter sent by our mutual friends at DRP, dated xx/xx/xx

You will appreciate that at the time of the incident in question, there was no independent route of appeal. However I understand that POPLA is now available to arbitrate within your industry, and that there is no time limit on when a POPLA code can be issued by an operator. Please send me a POPLA code so that I can appeal your PCN. I will agree to be bound by POPLA's independent decision"


If you hook a POPLA code you can cost them £27 by pointing out there's no RK liability as it's pre-PoFA, in addition to the usual lack of GPEOL, signage, blah blah blah.