CEL turn up to court. 50 cases of ticketing their own customer's employees

ManxRed

TDA wrote: »

I thought the Co-Op instructed CEL to drop the cases, but CEL basically told them to FRO and went ahead with them anyway, or was that a different retailer?

If you're dealing with a company as pig-ignorant as CEL who outright refuse to play ball regardless of the fact you are their client, there are limitations to what you can effectively do, no?

Nope. There are dozens and dozens of threads over at Pepipoo, where the victims emailed the Co-Op to ask for co-operation in defending the claims, by providing information about the contracts.

To begin with, they began paying the claims, which was a stupid thing to do and they were advised as much, but this simply fuelled CEL's greed and encouraged them to issue more and more claims. Eventually the Co-Op simply stopped paying and told the recipients of the claims words to the effect of 'this has nothing to do with us, we're very sorry but we can't help.'

In fact a lot of them were simply ignored altogether. In the end the advice on PePiPoo was not to bother at all with the Co-Op as this was a waste of time. They effectively put their fingers in their ears and went 'la la la la la' when they could have helped the victims shaft CEL by providing key information relevant to their defences.

As a long standing member of the Co-Op who used to shop there every week, I've now boycotted the place over the attitude they showed to recipients of claims, they deserve everything they get.

bluetoffee1878

The CEL signs in the Kirkby Co-op car park (which are still up by the way) which is mentioned in the witness statement on the pranksters blog state:
"Vehicles exceeding the 2 hours free allowance will be charged £90 (reduced to £45 if paid within 14 days. To deter abuse of this car park, these terms apply 24 hours a day"

So by their own admission it is a deterrent. Thats not allowed is it. Plus how do you charge a vehicle? no mention of driver or RK.

Mike172

bargepole wrote: »

Regular readers of this forum may remember this thread: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4903216, in which CEL appealed a decision from a county court, and were soundly thrashed by the Circuit Judge.


They were also represented at that hearing by Mr Ritchie, and I am surprised he would want to represent them again after seeing their 'contractually agreed charge' arguments torn to shreds.


As for the Co-Op, I wrote to their CEO some time ago about the lessons they should have learned from the Somerfield debacle, but all I got in reply was a load of corporate bullcrap from some lackey, about how 'our customers have told us they can't always find a space, due to non-customerS taking up spaces".


So they bring in a PPC, and in the first two weeks ticket and discourage most rogue parkers, happy days. Except that the PPC wants to recoup the investment, so now they have to start finding other people to ticket.


And who are those other people? Customers and staff, of course. When will they ever learn?

I think people in general (COOP too is run by humans, apparently) expect a firm like a PPC to operate fairly and appropriately (professionally in fact) and be an upstanding respectable company and forget they are in fact private firms that need to (want to) make money rather than do what is expected e.g. ensure their customers can park.

Sure it back fires and gets well out of hand but don't forget that COOP or any other company isn't a single person. These decisions may be made by different people at different times. How are they to know the PPCs are scamming (insert description Ill probably get banned for here). I certainly didnt know they were last year when I moved into my flat to find it was patrolled by a PPC. NTK's with big red lettering, claiming court action and photos of my vehicle looked pretty legit.

bazster

It's called "due diligence".

Mike172

bazster wrote: »

It's called "due diligence".

Which must be carried out by........ human beings.

Their effort may well be looking at their web pages. I wouldnt pay much attention to a forum full of negative comments in the same way I wouldn't take too much notice of a website review or customer views of a restaurant......

Half_way

How are they to know the PPCs are scamming (insert description Ill probably get banned for here). I certainly didnt know they were

The big difference here is that you are an individual, and a large corporate entity such the the Co-op should have a reasonably clued up, and reasonably well resourced legal team in place to check any new contracts.
When a large company/entity gets into bed with something as repulsive as a PPC it should know exactly what it is doing.

If we are talking about independent retailers such as the local corner shop, a free-house pub owned and run by the landlord, or a community centre run by a committee of volunteers ( or any other such thing) then theres an excuse as in most cases they are victims of PPC spin.
but for a large corporation then they get everything they deserve.

bazster

Mike172 wrote: »

Which must be carried out by........ human beings.

Their effort may well be looking at their web pages. I wouldnt pay much attention to a forum full of negative comments in the same way I wouldn't take too much notice of a website review or customer views of a restaurant......

Due diligence entails a bit more than a bit of web browsing. It ought to be obvious to anyone with half a brain that engaging a PPC carries the risk of badly upsetting customers, so for a company as large and high-profile as the Co-Op due diligence should entail some in-depth prying into the company, its methods, its other customers and so forth.

Either they didn't do it, or they did it but they didn't care. As stated above, they have now got what they deserved.

And their behaviour since it blew up in their faces has been even worse. Instead of using the law to try to stop CEL persecuting their customers they simply paid CEL, which only encouraged the scumbags to go after even more customers. And when that got too expensive for the Co-Op they refused to help their customers at all, even refusing them information that would've helped them to defend themselves.

Only now, when it's their own employees being persecuted, do they discover they have got the cojones for the court room after all. Customers? Who gives a s**t, certainly not the Co-Op. Ethical my a**e.

trisontana

The management should ask themselves the fundamental question "would the company be happy if our customers are taken to court by our agent?" If they don't want that to happen (with all the negative publicity) then don't hire the PPC.

Perhaps the CO-OP didn't think think it through and imagined that the PPC would just issue the odd ticket and leave it at that.

It's rumored that some supermarkets have a "don't take our customers to court " clause. I don't know if that's true or not.

Ivor_Pecheque

ha ha, dog eat dog, shame the poor workers are victimised.

Mike172

bazster wrote: »

Either they didn't do it, or they did it but they didn't care.

Exactly