Letter of Claim. Pay or Wait ?

dancingqueen27

Hi everyone,

I had a parking notice 6 months ago from NCP Limited. Ignored their letters. Yesterday I get a letter of claim from BW Legal with 30 days to either pay £160 or face the court with estimated total of £239.70

What would you do in my case ? Ignore, appeal or pay ?

Many thanks,

MistyZ

Letter of claim .... time to act I believe, assuming that it is the same thing as a Letter Before Claim. While waiting for more advice, go to the Newbies' thread, scroll down till you see a post by Coupon-mad with words 'Small Claim?' in red.

Jetslick

Don't ignore. You're at a stage now where you need to respond else BW Legal will eventually take you to court and if you don't defend that you'll get a default judgement for a CCJ.

Definitely don't pay either. BW Legal are inflating the price to make a profit via double recovery (the additional £60 on the PCN).

Check the NEWBIES stickie thread (and go to post #2) on this forum. You should send a SAR (use the SAR template) to NCP Lkmited to obtain all the information they hold against you. Then, you should send an email of a 'Letter of Claim rebuttal' to BW Legal - explaining why you dispute the PCN. If you give us some details we can help.

Le_Kirk

Is it a proper LOC/LBC/LBA/LBCCC? If it is it will give your 30 days to respond, will contain proof of the claim with evidence and will include financial forms (which you don't fill in).

Umkomaas

What would you do in my case ? Ignore, appeal or pay ?

Ignore - only if you want to risk having your credit rating trashed for the next 6 years.

Appeal - too late to do so with NCP. Maybe a landowner complaint, but NCP run many of their own car parks.

Pay - no one here recommends that option, especially as if this got to court and you lost, the payment a Judge would order would be around £175 - much less than they're trying to scam from you now.

Here's what you do - as well as following MistyZ's excellent advice in terms of dealing with what you've just received - wait to see if court proceedings are actually served, then get on with defending yourself with some help from the forum. You're a good few months away from that at the moment, so now is not the time to panic and pay just because you've had a solicitor's letter. Just think about what tactic they are using against you (and thousands of others) here!

Do you have photos of the signage in the car park (taken in the same light conditions as on the day)? If it was during the hours of darkness, don't use flash, although you need to have some using flash so that the t&cs are legible - the signage is the legal contract between NCP and the driver.

The_Deep

That £240 is a fiction, an attempt by a scamming parking company and Solicitor to screw you, wait until they send a letter before claim and then fight. Read this

It is the will of Parliament that these scammers, (very often former clampers), be put out of business.

Hopefully that will take place in the near future. The Bill has passed through the HOC without hitch, and goes to the Lords soon. In the meantime involve your MP, the poor dears are buckling under the weight of complaints about these scammers.

This is an entirely unregulated industry which is scamming the public with inflated claims for minor breaches of alleged contracts for alleged parking offences, aided and abetted by a handful of low-rent solicitors. Is has been suggested by an MP that some of these companies may have connections to organised crime.

Parking Eye, CPM, Smart, (especially Smart}, and others have already been named and shamed in the House of Commons as have Gladstones Solicitors, and BW Legal, (these two law firms take hundreds of these cases to court each week), hospital car parks and residential complex tickets have been especially mentioned. They lose most of them, and have been reported to the regulatory authority by an M.P. for unprofessional conduct

The problem has become so widespread that MPs have agreed to enact a Bill to regulate these scammers.

Sir Greg Knight's Private Members Bill to curb the excesses, and perhaps close down, some of these companies passed its Third Reading in late November, and, with a fair wind, will become Law next year.

All three readings are available to watch on the internet, (some 6-7 hours), and published in Hansard. MPs have an extremely low opinion of the industry. Many are complaining that they are becoming overwhelmed by complaints from members of the public. Add to their burden, complain in the most robust terms about the scammers.

beamerguy

dancingqueen27

Is the letter compliant with the new debt protocol ?

Did BWLegal prove their claim
Pictures
Pictures of signs
Proof of the amount they claim.

They have added a fake £60 to the claim
BWLEGAL ADD ON A FAKE £60 ?
In addition to the 'parking charge', the Claimant's legal representatives, BWLegal, have artificially inflated the value of the Claim by adding costs of £60 which has not actually been incurred by the Claimant, and which are artificially invented figures in an attempt to circumvent the Small Claims costs rules using double recovery. >>>> thanks to bargepole

Ask them to account for the £60, they have different accounts for this ... none are true

dancingqueen27

The letter only states the details of the car, when it has happened and which parking company is.

Then info on how to pay...

Coupon-mad

Yes but it's a LBC with reply forms, as you already told us, so off you need to go, to read the NEWBIES thread about a SAR.

And please read at least twenty other court claim threads as research, it will help you a lot.

waamo

I'm not convinced this is an LBC. Can you confirm did the letter contain financial information forms?

dancingqueen27

Jetslick wrote: »

Don't ignore. You're at a stage now where you need to respond else BW Legal will eventually take you to court and if you don't defend that you'll get a default judgement for a CCJ.

Definitely don't pay either. BW Legal are inflating the price to make a profit via double recovery (the additional £60 on the PCN).

Check the NEWBIES stickie thread (and go to post #2) on this forum. You should send a SAR (use the SAR template) to NCP Lkmited to obtain all the information they hold against you. Then, you should send an email of a 'Letter of Claim rebuttal' to BW Legal - explaining why you dispute the PCN. If you give us some details we can help.

What details would you like, JetSlick? To be honest I have no idea what to write to dispute the PCN to BW Legal. Some advice would be much appreciated !