Wright Hassall chasing paid debt

tommyle

Hi there, hope you can help. I think this is a variation on the ZZPS/Wright Hassall postings.

I paid a 'parking fine' more than 2 years ago after I lost an appeal. I paid by credit card to Debt Recovery Plus, as advised by the car park operator. Recently I had had a letter from ZZPS advising that their client, the original parking company, were chasing the debt. Then I had a 'formal letter of claim' from Wright Hassall who said they were instructed by ZZPS. (I received the ZZPS and WH letters together as we have moved house).

I have sent WH the email from DRP and an email copy of the bank statement showing the payment. Unfortunately neither of these refers to the original PCN reference so they are not accepting this as evidence and now threatening legal action.

Basically I've paid the debt but they want proof.

A few questions. Is it my responsibility to help them match up my payment to the PCN and provide evidence?
Should I just sit tight and assume they won't bring to court?
Should I give them my new address in case I miss any documents sent by post to my old one?

Many thanks

fisherjim

I can't understand why anyone pays a debt recovery scammer, but are you sure this is the same pcn, they have a habit of sending things out of the blue.

Coupon-mad

I paid by credit card to Debt Recovery Plus, as advised by the car park operator.

Ouch ouch ouch, you never had a debt to pay!

Basically I've paid the debt but they want proof.

There was no debt. Aarrrrgh, you were had!

Is it my responsibility to help them match up my payment to the PCN and provide evidence?

Nope but neither was it your responsibility to pay this scam, certainly NOT to DRPlus who whacked on more money and probably took it to an eye-watering £160 that you never even owed.

Should I just sit tight and assume they won't bring to court?

Nope, I would respond.

How about also emailing DRPlus (if you can find 'your ref' from an old DRPlus letter, as you need that to email DRPlus) and ask them to confirm what case/PCN number the payment related to.

info@drpl.co.uk

Should I give them my new address in case I miss any documents sent by post to my old one?

Yes, re Wright Hassall, reply and tell them your new address and say you will reply when WH send a compliant Letter Before Claim, because this isn't one. Add that, since you have paid the 'charge' and owe no money, any letters from now on are undoubtedly a 'serious and persistent unwarranted threat' as found by Lord Justice Sedley in Ferguson v British Gas Trading Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 46, where it was stated:

"What British Gas was threatening was undoubtedly serious. Mr Porter [British Gas's QC] sought to downgrade it by saying that Ms Ferguson knew the claims and threats were unjustified. That is absurd: a victim of harassment will almost always know that it is unjustified. The Act is there to protect people against unjustified harassment. Indeed if the impugned conduct is justified it is unlikely to amount to harassment at all."

"Mr Porter also made the point that the correspondence was computer generated and so, for some reason which I do not really follow, Ms Ferguson should not have taken it as seriously as if it had come from an individual. But real people are responsible for programming and entering material into the computer. It is British Gas's system which, at the very least, allowed the impugned conduct to happen."

"Moreover the threats and demands were to be read by a real person, not by a computer. A real person is likely to suffer real anxiety and distress if threatened in the way which Ms Ferguson was."


(finish by saying you will seek punitive costs should this matter proceed to court and that this course of conduct is already causing you and your family serious distress.).

Loadsofchildren123

Yes to giving them your new address. They have 6 years to issue a claim and if you don't you risk an unknown CCJ which, if you don't pay it (which you won't if you don't know about it) will go on your credit record.

Your other question - who is it up to to prove a claim? Them. Who is it up to to prove a defence? You.

So the answer to that is yes and no! I take it you discarded evidence of the PCN at the time you lost the appeal and paid. Or might you have an old letter or email somewhere if you look hard enough? If you kept nothing, your case will be that you paid and so there is no debt owing, and that's all your defence will be.

In your evidence you will expand on this: you'll produce your credit card statement and will explain what happened back in 2015 when you got the original pcn (you appealed it, lost the appeal and didn't want to deal with defending a court claim so simply decided to pay). You will put all the detail you can into your statement - where the car park was, how difficult it was for you to pay at the time and so on. You will say you discarded all the paperwork afterwards because you had no reason to keep it. You'll say you got no other pcns for parking in that car park or any other car park again and so this claim can only relate to that original pcn.

A judge then has to decide who is telling the truth, on the balance of probabilities. The more detail you give from the time you appealed and paid, the more believable you will be.

The onus is then on them to show that what you paid wasn't in fact anything to do with this pcn. That will be very difficult for them.

If I was you I would write to them in very robust terms, telling them that you paid the pcn, you have provided evidence of the payment, and they must now stop writing to you otherwise they will be committing an offence under Section 1 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, and that they must now cease to retain and process your data, because they are also breaching your rights under the Data Protection Act and you insist they must destroy it forthwith.

Tell them if they continue to harass and pester you about this matter and to retain and process your data you will be forced to make a claim for damages.

tommyle

Thanks for the reply loadsof.., really helpful. They are demanding a bank statement with the bank's address
on. My online bank doesn't print the address on the statement they sent me so they're refusing to accept it. That's not going to count against me is it?

Coupon-mad

Already told you what to do and how to contact DRP - are you not interested in finding out what THEY did with your money?!

tommyle

Yes I am interested and I emailed them again today after your post - I had already tried and they hadn't replied. This was a separate question about what evidence I might need in future.

beamerguy

tommyle wrote: »

Thanks for the reply loadsof.., really helpful. They are demanding a bank statement with the bank's address
on. My online bank doesn't print the address on the statement they sent me so they're refusing to accept it. That's not going to count against me is it?

It is unclear to me why you would ever consider giving details to a solicitor who are knowingly involved in a scam industry.

Redacted bank statement showing the payment .. yes
Anymore info ... NO.

If everything is as you say, the question must be did
DRP pay the PPC ??
As its the PPC who instructed WH, then it is up to Wright Hassall
to return this to the PPC.

Ever played poker ? nobody knows who has a winning hand,
In your case you do have a Winning Hand

As far as you are concerned you have proof that you paid,
Wright Hassall need to prove you did not, that's proof and
not a fake claim

In future, if you ever get another ticket and DRP come
knocking again, NEVER PAY THEM, the media is full of
good advice about not paying scammers.
You paid a scammer

The_Deep

Let them take you to court and clobber them.

Coupon-mad

tommyle wrote: »

Yes I am interested and I emailed them again today after your post - I had already tried and they hadn't replied. This was a separate question about what evidence I might need in future.

Good, as long as you used their 'reference' from their earlier letters (NOT THE PCN NUMBER) they can trace the case you are talking about and if you show them the payment they can trace that - and they must reply.

Still hugely disappointed you paid. We never read about victims paying this scam, and NEVER to £160 a debt collector just because you'd got some letters, so sad. That's what this forum is here for. People here pay nothing at all.

Loadsofchildren123

I don’t see what the bank’s address would show. Ask them. You should be required to show nothing other than a redacted version. Did you explain online statements don’t show an address anyway and you don’t have paper statements? It will cost you £10 to get a paper statement. Ju should you pay even more money to prove something they should know?