BW Legal and Excel; £54 'legal charge' justifiable ?

Coupon-mad

if my only argument is that the charge is unreasonable

That would not be your only argument. That is the one that will not stick!

Signage issues and the ownership of the land/their contract with the landowner would be relevant, as would the fact they've taken six years to dig this out from the archives which does not meet the overriding objectives of the CPR and places a consumer on the back foot. With no paperwork and no evidence and misleading statements about signs that would never have stipulated BW Legal fees on them six years ago (because BW Legal didn't do this work then, and almost no parking signs back then were anything more than small print!), this is unjust:

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part01

Coupon-m: I fear bw has learned from other responses: they have reworded the part re CCJ so that it is far less misleading and they are careful not to suggest the £54 are their fees, but are "Our Client's initial legal costs, which are detailed in the Car Park terms and conditions".

Ask for evidence of the statement that the legal costs are detailed transparently on signs in legible large letters.

Meanwhile, lodge a CSA and SRA complaint anyway, even if just saying a few things such as, BW Legal are misleading you and are trying to claim money (their costs) which are simply not recoverable in small claims unless a defendant was vexatious and unreasonable, which you certainly are not (you engaged in the appeals process in a timely fashion six years ago). What is unreasonable and vexatious, is their conduct in reviving a practically dead & buried charge after six years with boiler-plate wording of computerised standard blurb, stating (wrongly) that they can add another £54 and then when challenged on this, asserting wrongly, that those fees formed part of the contract on the signs. It did not.

Find the relevant points in the CSA and SRA Codes which BW Legal have breached in your case. THERE ARE SOME. Quote them to those organisations and put it in their hands to investigate your case because you do have a case for complaint.

You would be mad to pay this. You appear to be looking for reasons NOT to complain to the CSA and SRA even though you still have grounds to do so and those complaints should tie BW Legal up long enough to easily get you past the post.

yotmon

Coupon-mad wrote: »

yotmon, have you added the weight of your own complaints to the CSA and SRA yet? The more the better.

Hi CM (welcome back), I will be formatting complaints to the SRA and CRA very shortly. Yesterday I sent a complaint to the landowners re' their own signage and i'm eagerly awaiting their pre-empted reply so that I can hit them with further evidence. I'm also taking up an old complaint with the IPC over an unresolved issue with VCS. As you say - let's keep them busy !

As an aside, with BWlegal admitting that all previous letters sent should not be seen as LBAs, therefore, are they acting as debt collectors rather than Solicitors. If so, are we taking them too seriously or should we reduce them in the ranks with the likes of Wright Hassle ?

beamerguy

yotmon wrote: »

As an aside, with BWlegal admitting that all previous letters sent should not be seen as LBAs, therefore, are they acting as debt collectors rather than Solicitors. If so, are we taking them too seriously or should we reduce them in the ranks with the likes of Wright Hassle ?

Have I missed something ? When did BWLegal admit

yotmon

JJ7516 wrote: »

yotmon, I can see that I may appear to be crazy at first blush, but you cannot deny that the majority of cases posted on this and other sites involve either registered keepers who can rely on the POFA 2012 argument or are drivers with a different argument. As loathe as I am to capitulate, if my only argument is that the charge is unreasonable and the law is against me, I would lose if they do issue proceedings and would face the charge plus whatever costs the court deemed reasonable against me, so would end up paying more, which would be foolish. If there is any mileage in arguing that the charge is still unreasonable, even after Beavis, as the car park did not offer 2 hours free parking, as in that case and the charge is even higher than in that case, I would more than happily take this all the way. I have no confidence, given all that I have read, that this is the case. The difficulty I have is that the many helpful letters and arguments on these forums do not relate to my defence.

Hi JJ, what I was trying to get across to you is the very unlikelihood of your case ever reaching court. As I said, BWlegal are sending out thousands of letters in an attempt to frighten non-payers into coughing up. If you look on this site you will find 'your' letter published and talked about many many times. Nobody in BW towers are personally writing the letters, they are more likely computer generated and off they go to strike fear into non-payers ! Hopefully, none of their 'back room' boys have noticed your impending expiry date. Find good letters on here to reply to them, using 2nd class post rather than email - adding a few extra miles on the clock-ometer. Before you know it, you will be court exempt. And don't concern yourself about having a good enough defence, if it came to needing one then you will be assisted on here by very knowledgeable contributors.

beamerguy

But Yotman, you said this

"with BWlegal admitting that all previous letters sent should not be seen as LBAs,"

This would change the game so where did that come from please
?

yotmon

beamerguy wrote: »

Have I missed something ? When did BWLegal admit

Hi BG, in a reply to a letter I sent them which included the following paragraph -

"should it be your clients intention to start court
proceedings, they must provide a Letter Before Claim which complies
with the requirements of Annex A Paragraph 2 of the Practice Direction
on Pre-action conduct. Please note that a failure and/or refusal to
comply with the Practice Direction will result in a complaint being
made to the court and an application for a stay of action and costs
pursuant to the provisions of paragraph 4 of the Practice Direction on
non compliance and sanctions".

BW legal replied " We note your comments regarding our requests in our initial letter of the 1st august 2016 requesting you make contact or pay within 10 days, please note that our initial letter is a pre legal letter and not a letter before action"

They continue "A letter before action would be sent at a future date giving the prescribed time to respond if the PCN is not paid prior to the issuing of legal proceedings".

yotmon

beamerguy wrote: »

But Yotman, you said this

"with BWlegal admitting that all previous letters sent should not be seen as LBAs,"

This would change the game so where did that come from please
?

Maybe I should have worded that as 'previous letters to myself'.

beamerguy

"BW legal replied " We note your comments regarding our requests in our initial letter of the 1st august 2016 requesting you make contact or pay within 10 days, please note that our initial letter is a pre legal letter and not a letter before action"

They continue "A letter before action would be sent at a future date giving the prescribed time to respond if the PCN is not paid prior to the issuing of legal proceedings"."

So can we assume that "pre-legal" actually means "pre-begging" ?

I doubt that the sheer volume of people receiving these letters and threats therein would read it as "pre-legal"

BWLegal are sending out menacing letters designed to confuse people to pay up ..... or else.

Any chance you can show us this reply please (actual letter)

yotmon

beamerguy wrote: »

Any chance you can show us this reply please (actual letter)

Nothing in it of real interest, only the same old same old - re' the claim for £154, then mentions the 'contravention' date and location, then they throw in Elliot v Loake for good measure, then try and justify their £54 fee 'as it was detailed in the terms and conditions of the par park'.
Plus the obligatory " In order to prevent further costs from being occurred we would be grateful if you would contact us within 7 days from the date of this letter to pay the balance". Yeah, I bet they would !
Sending a letter 2nd class post prior to a bank holiday, then expecting a response within 7 days just about weighs them up !
If need be, I'll ask my daughter to scan it in - at least it then shows what the actual horse said.

The_Deep

Elliott v Loake should be complained of to the SRA, it is entirely unprofessional.