Gladstone letter

Missaiesha

Hello,
Wanting some advice on a letter from Gladstone solicitors. I have read the newbies forum and similar threads but still have some questions.

Background:
Earlier this year we received a letter from DRP informing us we had failed to respond to a PCN by G24 parking and the case had been passed on to them. We never received any PCN only this letter out of the blue.

The PCN was issued for overstaying by 20 mins in a retail park where we regularly go shopping, confusingly one area of the car park gives 3 hours free parking and the other section 2 hours - something I had not really noticed before this incident. We were in the 2hr section and stayed 2hrs 20. The retail park states that longer parking is permitted if required, as long as the customer presents to security at the time - we didn't do this as we thought we were within the 3hrs allowed. In addition the event happened in August and we received the first letter in January and I have no receipts or statements from that date to prove I was a shopper (used cash).

Having read the information on this forum we decided to ignore the letter and subsequent ones sent from drp and zenith.

The most recent letter is from Gladstone which states 'the client now has the option to commence proceeding' with details on how to contact drp to pay the £130.

My questions are:
1. Is this letter one I need to respond to or should I ignore it as it doesn't explicitly state court action?

2. Is there any point trying to contact the retail park regarding this to see if this can be dropped? I didn't in the first instance due to lack of receipts etc and wasn't sure if they could do anything as it's an external company.

3. Are there any other actions I need to take at this point? We are willing to fight this if needed but would also like to avoid having to go to court if possible.

Thank you

fisherjim

The letter from Gladstones who are bottom feeding muppets is another debt recovery letter masquerading as a solicitors letter, hint it tells you to pay Debt Recovery Plus!


G24 aren't litigious, though in the future who knows.


Nothing much you can do at the moment apart from complain to your MP about this scam, they are at last getting the picture.



Come back in the unlikely event you get real court papers.

Missaiesha

Okay thank you,
I'd read some threads of people with letters from Gladstone that required a response so wasn't sure if my letter fell into that category.

I'll keep holding out in that case

Umkomaas

The most recent letter is from Gladstone which states 'the client now has the option to commence proceeding' with details on how to contact drp to pay the £130.

The payee makes it obvious as to who sent this letter.

Now if you're up for this and are prepared to draft one letter (framework available to construct it), you SAR-bomb Gladstones under DPA GDPR.

Even though we (you) are pretty clear this came from DRP, the fact that the naive would assume it's from Gladstones (given the letterhead), leaves them open and vulnerable to a SAR which forces them to respond within 1 month. This could give them some extreme aggravation - just as they (or their compatriots) are giving you.

Here's a framework to help you construct your SAR.

https://padi.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206890469-6-Subject-Access-Requests-Easy-

Tell us if you're prepared to do this.

Coupon-mad

Why not just talk among yourselves by pm with others exactly the same?

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5851916/solicitor-letter-what-do-i-do-now

Saves us repeating the same thing on every G24 thread, of which there are hundreds...