VCS Letter Before Claim - EDIT - I WON!!

Coupon-mad

It's petty but the out of date statement of truth is less petty.

Remind us when the hearing as that you got the CCJ set aside at?  

JACK24

Coupon-mad said:

Remind us when the hearing as that you got the CCJ set aside at?  

The CCJ set aside hearing was on 22/6/20

Coupon-mad

That was quick if you only applied in June - your court is fast!  VCS seem confused, which is good.

Fruitcake

An electronic signature might imply that the paralegal was not actually a party to the WS and someone else might have put it there without Yasmeen's knowledge. As far as I can tell it is identical down to the last pixel with other examples of "her" signature. If you draw a line from the dot after the letter Y to the end of the lower tail of the long letter, you will find that it just touches the bottom of the letter "0". 
You can do this with every example of this signature, every single time, including her signature on an Excel Parking WS.
Petty? Maybe. Or perhaps the WS is a false statement because the named person didn't write it or sign it.

As C-m says, having the old out of date statement of truth is a stronger point, but does support the idea that the whole signature section is a facsimile, not a real one.

As for the site boundary plan, the key clearly shows that there is no entrance board. This is a breach of the BPA CoP (the only one that is valid for this contract). It might be a breach of the IPC CoP as well. 
I suggest you look up both CoPs that were in use at the time of the alleged event and quote the one(s) that support this.

Have the scammers identified where the car was allegedly parked to prove that it was actually parked inside the area they "manage"?

JACK24

RESULT - I won ! :-)  Case was dismissed and my costs to be paid by VCS.

THANKYOU for all your help - much appreciated. Especially Coupon-mad, Nosferatou & Fruitcake (and many others)

Overview of today as it may help others in the futue/food for thought for some :
- Their solicitor was unaware that it was a small claims case - he thought it was a Set aside, but continued anyway.
- The judge's decision hinged on whether I had "displayed" a valid permit. It appeared that most of the other things(Abuse of process, signage, contract legalities etc) weren't important/relevant?
- The judge didn't accept that the contract was irrelevant or out of date (despite a number of technicalities eg BPA/Towing/singatories/dates etc as noted by fruitcake) She said it was a rolling contract and was relevant  
- Their solicitor started arguing that there was no abuse of process and referring to other cases.(Britannia & Beavis)
- Their solicitor also stated that IPC regs state there "should" be an entrance board but it's not necessary in a small car park.
- It was accepted that I had a valid permit
- The judge didn't feel that VCS had proved where the car was(thanks Fruitcake for this one), or that a permit/ticket clearly wasn't displayed - photographs were not clear/there was reflection on the windscreen etc. Therefore she went in my favour.
- At the end there was an observation by the judge regarding additional costs - these are permitted, if reasonable, but unfair for companies to state on signage without stating how much these costs would be.

My observations:
- Stressful process - lots of time/effort/research required to go this far and win. Scary process as at times you feel that you're on your own, others on here have helped/guided me massively through this. But at times posts get lost.
- As others have previously mentioned - the incompetence of professionals is unbelievable - eg not knowing what type of court case this was today
- I would do it again(as I won) and I now know more about this process, but I wasn't sure which way today's case was going until the end.
- If VCS had been more competent, better photographs

Umkomaas

🥂 Very well done, a rather nasty little monkey off your back. 

Come back to the forum (probably in a couple of weeks) and, given your very real, first-hand experience of the protection racket that is the private parking scamdustry, comment on the draft National Parking Code of Practice - you have real reasons to tell the government your take on things. 

Have a great weekend, with a weight no doubt off your shoulders. 

JACK24

Umkomaas said:

Come back to the forum (probably in a couple of weeks) and, given your very real, first-hand experience of the protection racket that is the private parking scamdustry, comment on the draft National Parking Code of Practice - you have real reasons to tell the government your take on things. 

Will do!

Snakes_Belly

Very well done   Good to see VCS lose yet again.  Their reps are not very clued up and probably do not receive that "War and Peace" of a witness statement until the last minute. 

Le_Kirk

Well done on the win AND costs.  Shame that judges don't see these cases for what they are - blatant attempts to use the courts to profit by adding additional (illegal) costs.  Why are contracts irrelevant?  Don't understand this one but then, I am not a judge!  What is the point of ANY contract if the law, in the form of judges, can just ignore them?

Fruitcake

If you are willing, please post the name of the court, the name of the judge, and the case number. By doing this others will be able to refer to it.
The bit about the extra amounts being claimed must be stated on the signs is very useful.

Anyway, well done. I'm glad I could help in some small way. Yes you had a lot of help, but don't let that detract from the fact that this was YOUR win, and against a legally qualified person, and against a multi-million pound scammer.