BW Legal letter from PCN issued in 2011

gdog1007

Hi,

I am new to this thread and am looking for some advice as i have seen various pieces of advice floating around re private parking tickets.

i have today opened up 3 letters relating to pcn's issued in 2011 from currys car park. The letters are from BW legal and are all for 154 pounds.

At the time of the tickets being issued my place of work (police station) had a local agreement with the manager of the store that allowed officers to park their private vehicles at the side of their car park. I recall a nuber of colleagues receiving tickets but the advice was to hand them to the manager who stated he would cancel the tickets for us as it was an error on the enforcement officer.

As such i thought nothing of it and received no letters from the company.

As this agreement was in place, would the advice be to simply inform BW legal of this via a written letter and state that further letters from the manager at the time will be aquired to assist should they wish to pursue the matter to the county court?

I have seen a number of draft letters with regard to POFA 2012 but would prefer to be completely transparant from the outset as i feel i have completely bullet proof argument.

any help / advice would be appreciated.

Fruitcake

There has been a flood of BW Legal cases recently, many of them from before the POFA 2012 was enacted.

I'm not an expert but I suggest you do a search on this forum for similar threads. The advice from the experts will be the same as for you so you should be able to find help soon.

Don't do anything yet until you have searched, and a few of the more knowledgeable regulars have replied here. At some point you will write to them telling them that they can't add on fees (there will be an extra 54 quid added on to the 100 quid parking charge) and that since this is pre POFA, the keeper cannot be held liable.

You need to complain to the SRA about this, and there are lots of posts about what you should say.

The important thing I that you must not, under any circumstances, reveal who was driving. Your wording therefore must be very careful. No, I parked, or anything like that. There is you, the keeper, and there is this other person, the driver.
You need to get that mindset fixed in your head.

beamerguy

gdog1007 wrote: »

Hi,

I am new to this thread and am looking for some advice as i have seen various pieces of advice floating around re private parking tickets.

i have today opened up 3 letters relating to pcn's issued in 2011 from currys car park. The letters are from BW legal and are all for 154 pounds.

At the time of the tickets being issued my place of work (police station) had a local agreement with the manager of the store that allowed officers to park their private vehicles at the side of their car park. I recall a nuber of colleagues receiving tickets but the advice was to hand them to the manager who stated he would cancel the tickets for us as it was an error on the enforcement officer.

As such i thought nothing of it and received no letters from the company.

As this agreement was in place, would the advice be to simply inform BW legal of this via a written letter and state that further letters from the manager at the time will be aquired to assist should they wish to pursue the matter to the county court?

I have seen a number of draft letters with regard to POFA 2012 but would prefer to be completely transparant from the outset as i feel i have completely bullet proof argument.

any help / advice would be appreciated.

First stop is the store manager and present him with the BWLegal rubbish.
Assume the tickets were from either VCS or Excel

You might think you have a bullet proof case, BWLegal are not interested so assuming the letters use the word "may" about court they are debt collector style.

These are pre POFA2012 tickets where they need to know the driver and you will not say.

As you have read on here, BWLegal are under investigation by the SRA so it is very important to know what they actually say in their letters, ie: threats and false statements

The_Deep

£154 per ticket is not allowed. Did they mention Elliott v Loake? Did they mention County Court Judgements, did they mention your credit rating?

Complain to Duncan Allen, Head of Compliance, SRA

http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page

The more complaints they get the better.

Read this

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=107836

Umkomaas

Are/were you a serving police officer?

Was this an official arrangement between the Police Service and Currys?

Can you get the officer-in-charge to write a letter of complaint to BWL - obviously using Police Service headed paper - telling them to drop the charges (or see them in court at their earliest opportunity)?

gdog1007

They did mention ccj and credit rating.

I will certainly be complaining.

It was on official local agreement between the manager and staff at the station. I was and am still a serving officer.

I am going to try and speak with the manager today to try and resolve this either by a letter from him confirming the agreement or by contacting his head office.

Thanks for your replys so far.

Umkomaas

I am going to try and speak with the manager today to try and resolve this either by a letter from him confirming the agreement or by contacting his head office.

If Currys contracted with VCS or Excel (the two sister company PPCs linked to BWL) then they should be instructing the relevant one to cancel this. A copy of a confirmation of the Police:Currys agreement is not likely to be strong enough to kill this off right now.

Might be useful if it ever gets to court, but you don't want the hassle of dealing with the paperwork in defending a case if you can get it nipped in the bud immediately.

I'd be going in there in full uniform (handcuffs ready :rotfl:) and exert pressure on the manager to sort this out now (you must have training in how to make people follow your instructions!!).

Do let us know how you get on.

beamerguy

gdog1007 wrote: »

They did mention ccj and credit rating.

I will certainly be complaining.

It was on official local agreement between the manager and staff at the station. I was and am still a serving officer.

I am going to try and speak with the manager today to try and resolve this either by a letter from him confirming the agreement or by contacting his head office.

Thanks for your replys so far.

That's the method BW Legal use.

You are now seeing first hand what thousands of people are facing from BWLegal.

My understanding of the law is that you are proven innocent until proven guilty
BWLegal assume the latter and now they are trying to extort money from you using false threats.
You should bring this to the attention of your local Commander as I'm certain that in your area, if that was happening to householders from someone door knocking with menacing threats you guys would be on the case.
The only difference is that this menace uses the postal service

Fruitcake

gdog1007 wrote: »

They did mention ccj and credit rating.

I will certainly be complaining.

It was on official local agreement between the manager and staff at the station. I was and am still a serving officer.

I am going to try and speak with the manager today to try and resolve this either by a letter from him confirming the agreement or by contacting his head office.

Thanks for your replys so far.

You should also be reporting this to Trading Standards, your local MP, and Mrs May. There is a thread about complaints to the government concerning the scams being run by members of this unregulated industry. It is causing a lot of problems for thousands of people.
This company, like many others, are being economical with the truth, and in some cases issuing bare faced lies. In my humble opinion that is trying to obtain money by deception, a criminal rather than civil offence.
As a serving police officer you may wish to determine if any crimes have been committed whilst you learn about these scams in order to defend yourself. You may also wish to highlight this problem with your fellow officers and superiors.
It may seem to many in power that it is not much a problem, but when you read that someone has been made homeless because they had a default judgement and CCJ against them that they weren't aware of, for a private parking ticket that was actually not even theirs, and multiply that by the tens of thousands of court papers issued each year (thirty thousand per year by one parking company alone) by these scammers, the total money involved runs into millions of pounds.
That to me is not a minor issue.

Perhaps when you reply to BW illegal you should do it on police station headed notepaper, and mention your rank.

eta.

Redx, it's good to know you are still around. You have been missed.

gdog1007

I am hoping a visit to store will sort this problem out and am hoping the same manager remains in place.

Should he have moved on however I feel I will be left with no other option but to go down the POFA route of getting BW to prove who the driver was.
I am not entirely comfortable with this as should it ever go to court I would then have to show my hand and the necessary evidence re the local agreement that was in place.

I am hoping God is smiling down on me and currys can sort this out.

Umkomaas

As a serving police officer you may wish to determine if any crimes have been committed whilst you learn about these scams in order to defend yourself. You may also wish to highlight this problem with your fellow officers and superiors.

And don't let them give you the usual police fob-off 'It's a civilian matter Sir, sorry we can't help'.