Many letters, not even owner!

Coupon-mad

Given the facts of your case you are missing a chance to hit them with silver bullets and to stop the claim in its tracks! I'd suggest this:



Dear Sirs,

Ref: xxxxxxx

I refer to your Letter before Claim which is a surprise, given your client knows they have the wrong party and are clearly trying to claim sums to which they are not entitled.

Be warned that if a claim is filed against me, in spite of what your client knows and already holds in their database about this case, I will counterclaim for a sum not less than £500 for breach of the DPA 2018 and as compensation for distress caused by breaches of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

I deny any liability for the sum referred to in your letter and require you to place a hold on proceedings (to include your restricting data processing, given I am the wrong party) and furnish me with any and all evidence, details and or data you/your clients hold regarding this matter.

You will need to revert to take instructions from your client, who will actually have to get the file out and dust it off to read it for once, because this is not a roboclaim they can succeed with against me.

Specifically:

(a) I require evidence for the multiple PCNs you have added to this proposed claim, and to show how I can possibly be liable for them, and

(b) I completed and sent to your clients a Transfer of Liability form on or around xx/xx date, and have repeatedly proved this to them and their pointless debt collector agents so many times now that this is causing significant disruption to my peace of mind, taking up far too much of my time and is causing significant distress and loss of sleep and family time.

(c) Even if you believe your client can show evidence of my liability for all of the PCNs mentioned in your LBC (and you must show me that evidence now, in accordance with the PAP for debt claims - and I will not be filling in your income/expenditure forms) I also require your full breakdown of how you think they can possibly get away with adding spurious sums in double recovery, variously described as 'indemnity costs' or 'debt collection'.

Cease and desist. The alleged debt is not only denied but amounts to unwarranted harassment, as per Ferguson v British Gas Trading Ltd[2009] EWCA Civ 46.

Refer to your client and kindly supply the answers to the above and all the evidence and data held, under your/your client's obligations under the GDPR and the PAP.

We can then perhaps see what is and isn’t agreed between us, and perhaps go from there.

You are of course at liberty to seek independent advice.

yours,

ArrowStraight

An email has been sent and an auto reply received. In their reply they state that a response might take up to 30 days. I assume there's no point in chasing a reply until that time period is coming to an end?

nosferatu1001

Not really
Its their timescale right now, not yours.

ArrowStraight

Well it appears it's still their timescale and the dreaded lurgy hasn't stopped them.
Some six months have gone by and I got another letter on the 12th, as their response to mine (which was pretty much as coupon mad's draft)  still pursuing me - but I think they are back pedaling a little.   I hope I'm right.   I don't understand a lot of it but it contains these two paras towards the end:

"Our client will aver that you were the driver as this presumption has not been rebutted.*   However if you weren't it pursues you as the keeper (see the Act Schedule 4 (4 (1))**
If you nominate the driver by providing us with their full name and address prior to a claim being issued our client will pursue them not you.   We do not hold a copy of the alleged transfer of liability, this can be sent to enquiries@................"

*Of course as you can see in my earlier posts and as stated in my letter to them it has been rebutted.
**They are refusing to accept the evidence that I was not and that their client has already been told the name of the new owner and keeper.

As a beginner to such things I would normally email the name and address of the new keeper, yet again, but state that I cannot guarantee he was the driver.   However, are they trying to catch me out somehow?

Coupon-mad

No, they are lining up to sue you if you don't reply.

So reply like this (they don't seem to like robust responses so this should work):


Dear Sirs, 

Re  (parking firm's name and ref)
I refer to your recent letter and note that my response in November finally stopped your client from issuing a claim. 

I took it from your silence thus far in 2020, that your clients had finally stopped the harassment which had been going on for two years.  Are you suddenly writing to me now after all these months, in the hope I don't reply/have moved, because your rogue parking firm clients were hoping to get a default CCJ against me?  Bad luck.  I am here and I am still not liable in law but their conduct is clearly harassment.

I am alarmed that you are still trying to mislead me by pretending your client can pursue me when:

(a) I have clearly rebutted the possibility that I was either the keeper or the driver on the material dates, and 
(b) Your client has already been told the name & address of the keeper at the material time.

I remind your clients yet again (this is my warning before I sue them for harassment and report them to the IPC, DVLA and Information Commissioner) that the keeper at the time to my knowledge and belief was the person I sold the car to:
His Name
His address

Whether or not you get a response from him, it is a fact that he is the person defined as the 'keeper on the date of event'.  Not me.  You and your clients both know that a parking firm cannot revert to the previous registered keeper once they know that evidence has been shown as to who the actual registered keeper was, following the sale of the vehicle back in 2018.  This is untenable.  I will be reporting Gladstones Ltd (SRA ID 559050) to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for the misleading codswallop you persist in sending to me in the hope I will crack.  This is not conduct that meets the StaRs and I know that your firm already has a live investigation listed at the SRA due to an avalanche of complaints, so this one won't help your position any more than you are helping your clients.

Breach of debt collection rules - complaint to the FCA about Gladstones

I draw your attention to the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) Consumer Credit sourcebook which your staff can read here (May 2020 source 50):

https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/CONC.pdf  which includes mandatory principles including those I have quoted below.  It is my position that by demanding money, your conduct is bound by the Sourcebook rules.  Gladstones have breached the basic 'clear fair and not misleading' rule and the general requirements:

"A firm must not ignore or disregard a customer's claim that a debt is disputed and must not continue to make demands for payment without providing clear justification and/or evidence as to why the customer's claim is not valid." 7.5.3

"A firm must suspend any steps it takes or its agent takes in the recovery of a debt from a customer where the customer disputes the debt on valid grounds or what may be valid grounds." 7.14.1

"Where a customer disputes a debt on valid grounds or what may be valid grounds, the firm must investigate the dispute and provide details of the debt to the customer in a timely manner." 7.14.3

Harassment and notice of proprosed £900 counter claim

Due to the nature, number and wording of the unrelenting and wholly misleading 'debt recovery' and then Gladstones letters which ignore the evidence already produced to dispute and disprove any liability, the entire series of communications constitutes unwarranted harassment.  I object to the intimidatory nature of this unlawful operation.  Should a defence and counterclaim be necessary, I will pursue my full costs pursuant to Part 27.14(2)(g) of the Civil Procedure Rules.

Your clients have no cause of action, and must stop.  Kindly inform your clients that if a claim is filed against me, I will counterclaim and I will seek damages for distress and/or breach of statutory duty in the sum of £900, which is at the lower end of established guidance regarding harassment claims, pursuant to the following: 

a) damages for distress caused by the Claimants’ breach of statutory duty and misleading actions within the meaning of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, as amended by the Consumer Protection Regulations (Amendment) Regulations 2014 (“the Regulations”);  

b) damages for distress caused by the Claimants’ breach of statutory duty arising from breaches of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 ('the CRA');

c) damages for distress caused by breach of statutory duty under the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulation ('the GDPR');

d) damages for distress caused by harassment contrary to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 ('the PFHA') ref section 3.

Personal data must be processed fairly and lawfully.  Your clients stand in breach of Article 5 (1) of the GDPR (the requirement for lawfulness, fairness and transparency) and the doctrines of open dealing and good faith in the CRA. Accordingly, the processing of my DVLA data was not “necessary for the performance of, or commencing, a contract”, since no such contract existed with me and I was not the owner or keeper at the time of event(s). 

Your client had, and still has, no prospect of furthering their purpose and no legitimate cause to continue processing my data. In accordance with Principles 1,2 and 5 of the Data Protection Principles they were not permitted to either obtain, process or keep it.  The quantum of the alleged debt is in breach of Schedule 2 of the CRA and the misleading wording of this bombardment of demands pays no regard to the PAP, the FCA rules or the Regulations cited above in (a).  It is unfair business practice for a parking firm to continue to pursue a person who they know, or should know, was neither the driver nor the keeper, nor even the owner of a vehicle at the time of a parking event.

The conduct of your clients and their agents has amounted to an unfair commercial practice which is prohibited under regulation 3 of the CPTURs and a misleading action within the meaning of regulations 5 and 6, for which redress is available under regulation 27(J)(b).

In all the premises, the conduct of PPS and their agents amounts to harassment under section 1 of the PFHA.  It is pertinent to adduce the authorities of:

(i) Ferguson v British Gas Trading Ltd  [2009] EWCA Civ 46

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2009/46.html 

where Sedley LJ held: 

[52] ''...For my part I would draw attention to the fact [...] that harassment is a crime as well as a tort. Contrary to what was more than once suggested, this does not modify in any way the constituents of the wrong. 

[53] Parliament's intention in passing the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 was to criminalise the kind of serious and persistent unwarranted threat which is alleged here, giving a right of civil action as a fallback. In this situation it ought not to be left to hardy individuals to put their savings and homes at risk by suing. The primary responsibility should rest upon local public authorities which possess the means and the statutory powers to bring alleged harassers, however impersonal and powerful, before the local justices.''

and 

(ii) Harrison v Link Financial Ltd [2011] EWHC B3 (Mercantile)

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Mercantile/2011/B3.html 

where HHJ Chambers QC concluded at [83]:

''Cumulatively and damningly is what I find to be the way that MBNA and the Defendant went about recovering their debt. [...] It seems to me that such conduct has no proper function in the recovery of consumer debt. Whatever the strength of the suggestion that the courts should only be a last resort, I can see no legitimate comparison between a series of measured warnings which, after full opportunity for response, lead to legal proceedings and what took place. {...there} ...can be no excuse for conduct of which it must be supposed the sole purpose must have been to make the Claimant's life so difficult that he would come to heel. I cannot think that in a society that is otherwise so sensitive of a consumer's position this is conduct that should countenanced.''

(iii) Vidal-Hall v Google Inc [2015] EWCA 311 which confirms that pecuniary loss is not necessary for compensation to be payable and that pure distress is enough.

By reason of the matters aforesaid I have been obliged to deal with unjustified and aggressive correspondence from your clients and their agents which has arrived at my family home for over two years.   As a Litigant in Person I have suffered substantial damage and distress, causing sleepless nights, headaches and extreme worry.  I consider myself a robust person but I am only human and will attest to the severe effect on my peace of mind, on oath if required by the Judge, when I appear in court in person to present my defence and counterclaim. 

You and your clients are the cause of enormous anxiety for me and my family at a particularly difficult time.  If the bullying and misleading conduct aimed at me is an example of what PPS and Gladstones do every day, then sanctions by the various authorities are long overdue. 

Your clients must take stock of their position and cease and desist.  You must inform your clients to delete my data completely, and you must do the same.  I have made my position clear.

Yours faithfully  

YOUR NAME

beamerguy

Nice letter Coupon-mad

You see ArrowStraight, you are dealing with idiots and the conclusion is that you treat them like naughty children as C-m has nicely done.
Leaving scammers with wriggle room is not an option

Umkomaas

Howitzer, CM. 👏

@OP - don't water that down. 

zhonguonuren

Fantastic letter by Coupon-mad.  Hope you send and don’t forget to complain to
Report@sra.org.uk

Molts

Makes hairs stand on end when CM gets the bit between her teeth. Glad she's on our side! Stored that one away for future reference ;0)

D_P_Dance

Consider sending a copy of the letter to to SRA.

https://www.sra.org.uk/