What to do next??

GSDgirl

Hi, after reading and taking advice from sites such as this, I wrote to a private parking company who had apparently issued a PCN on my vehicle whilst parked on private land without a valid permit. PCN was apparently left on my vehicle 15/11/2015. An NTK was sent to my self 16/12/2015 inviting me to either pay the £100 charge or provide details of the driver. As the NTK failed to provide a time limit in which to respond, I waited until the 28 days were up and on 15/01/2015 wrote to the company informing them that I had no intention of paying the charge they were demanding as, amongst other things, the NTK was invalid due to the terms of POFA not being followed correctly.


In the meantime I received a letter from Debt Recovery Plus informing me that this matter had been passed to them and I now owed them £160, this letter was dated 15/01/2016 and would have been sent to me before the parking company would have received my letter. I could not believe that the parking company had passed this on to debt collectors before they would have received my response letter. In their letter they also provided a link to what they are calling a landmark case that was heard on 4th November 2015 and went in favour of private parking companies ( could not add link ) the link does not appear to work and even though I have tried correcting their spelling mistake on the link, I still cannot find anything. I decided to write to Debt Recovery Plus using a template and wrote this:




The debt is denied. Please refer the case back to your principal.



The debt is denied for the following reasons:

• I do not believe that I was the driver of the vehicle at the time of the alleged contravention.
• Keeper liability under the protection of freedoms Act 2012 was not established as a time limit was not given in the NTK for potential payment/response.

Since the debt is denied, debt collection activities are not appropriate and will be wasted costs on your part. I am prepared to settle the matter using alternative debt resolution procedures. Should the principal wish to settle the matter in court, please ensure they follow the appropriate practice directions for the civil courts.





Please do not contact me again. Any further correspondence from you will be considered harassment and will be reported to the appropriate authority.




On 02/02/2016 the parking company sent my letter back to me and at the top right hand corner had written in red biro pen " THIS CASE IS WITH DEBT RECOVERY! - YOU WILL NEED TO DEAL WITH THEM " .


Today, 04/02/2016 I received a letter back from Debt Recovery Plus informing me that the outstanding debt of £160 is still payable and that my letter, which appeared to be a template obtained from the internet will not resolve the matter and in addition, would recommended that professional legal advice be sought on this matter as an alternative.


From what I have been reading on various sites, it is my belief that this issue has nothing to do with Debt Recovery and the parking company would have to take court action before any Debt Recovery could be put in place - please could anyone advise me if I have this wrong? Also if that is the case, who should I report the Debt Recovery to as I clearly stated to them that any further correspondence from them would be treated as harassment and would be reported to appropriate authority?


Any advice would be very much appreciated :-)

Quentin

You should read the newbies faq thread at the top of the forum for advice where you will see the advice not to engage with debt collectors.


Ignore any more letters you get from debt collectors.


The FAQ thread has advice on what to do if (when) your appeal is denied regarding a second appeal.


If you need more help come back to your thread, though you will need to reveal all before you can get tailored advice

Coupon-mad

Read this as well as post #4 of the NEWBIES FAQS thread at the top of the forum too:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5035663

You seem to be panicking over nothing and looking for a next step that's not needed. Read what is here already, thousands upon thousands of threads like yours. I say this every day to people about this tedious, pathetic letter:

It's really an obvious thing to do but, search the forum for 'landmark Debt Recovery Plus'.