Sensible questioning or costly barrack-room lawyering: which?

Fruitcake

Grandad, perhaps add a comment that this concerns a situation you are aware of where an unregulated private parking company has issued a parking invoice to a disabled genuine customer of M & S.

I'm certainly up for it but I suggest we let the OP challenge the ownership statements by M & S and their sub-contactor they have employed first to see what happens.

beamerguy

Fruitcake said:

Grandad, perhaps add a comment that this concerns a situation you are aware of where an unregulated private parking company has issued a parking invoice to a disabled genuine customer of M & S.

I'm certainly up for it but I suggest we let the OP challenge the ownership statements by M & S and their sub-contactor they have employed first to see what happens.

I agree. let's see what happens.  I am more than happy to go for this as in my local M&S food hall, ECP is present and I have mentioned before that the ECP guy walks around like a tramp in a yellow coat and the next thing is you see him rolling up something which he then sets fire to ???

BUT ..... over the last 3 weeks, there has been a big white van with a M&S Warning on the side, a big moving camera on the roof.  So I understand, people have been walking out of the store with stolen goods ?
There are limited parking spaces and the bod who drives the van parks in spaces for customers and then parks in "disabled" bays and "mother and child" bays .......  so if the Chairman of M&S wants a real blast, I can handle that

The ECP chap is nowhere to be seen

Cark

Hello, everyone. Please note that I've read and greatly appreciated every one of the recent posts in this thread, and apologise for not adding much to it right now on Monday night. I'm very conscious of the kindness and goodwill shown by so many and wish I could treat you all to a drink, maybe using M&S gift vouchers supplied by the CEO. (I understand there are several thousand gallons of unstockable "!!!!!! Star" alcoholic fizz available, a beverage which the company's astute management figured was perfectly tailored to the life and times of the majority of its customers).

I have spent a little time today in contact with others at a local level so have not as yet had sufficient energy to marshal my thoughts for my reply to M&S's latest simpering hogwash. I will get on with the task tomorrow morning and provide an update here.

Meantime, my thanks again. All the points made have been noted and I promise to respond to everyone in the morning. Best wishes to all.

Cark

My reply to Friday's email from Marks & Spencer senior management:

Dear . . . . . ,

Apologies for the unintentionally belated nature of this reply to your email of last Friday,  but I have lacked the strength to face a continuation of correspondence with Marks & Spencer's senior management:  the effort leaves me physically and mentally drained at a time when, as a recovering stroke victim, I am not supposed to tire myself.

 It should not, of course, be that difficult to engage in an intelligible conversation with your company. Yet it all too obviously is. One can only wonder as to the reasons why, something  I have been doing before deciding to take steps to acquire clarification via the intervention of others in  this matter.

But allow me to respond first to the points raised in your email, the overall content of which I can only regard as sanctimonious claptrap.

 Despite your expressed hope that my wife and I remain Marks and Spencer's customers, we have no intention of putting money into any of your stores again.

 This is because despite all the twaddle about "MY" Customer Service which bedecks  almost every email I have received from M&S headquarters, it is clear that Marks & Spencer has as much regard for the welfare of its customers as does a fox for that of the inhabitants of a hen house.

 The presumption that I am flattered by being accorded some kind of ownership of M&S Customer Service is a delusion.  Neither you nor Marks & Spencer's management, at any level, at any time, are mine, nor ever will be.  The ingratiating childishness of the presumption does nothing to persuade me that anyone so far encountered in this correspondence chain is deserving of my time, effort, ownership or employment.

That notwithstanding, I have however noted your expression of regret at being unable to assist me in my appeal. This isn't the first time that Marks & Spencer's inability to be in the slightest way supportive of a customer has been expressed. . . though it is the first time anyone has thought I am appealing.

Fact is,  I am very likely the least appealing person you or anyone else at M&S is likely to encounter. 

 I am not asking, nor have ever asked, your Chief Executive or your Chairman to assist me in an appeal against the repellent antics of private parking operator Euro Car Parks Ltd and its parasitic fellow-traveller, the Dukinfield, Cheshire, debt collection agency Debt Recovery Plus Ltd.

 I merely asked Mr Rowe to cancel Euro Car Parks' extortionate demand for £85. I believed that in awareness of the facts of my state of health, Mr Rowe could very quickly and very easily comply with my request as an M&S customer of more than 50 years' standing that he call off his dogs.

He most certainly could have done, had he wanted to.

 ut then I was told he was powerless to do anything because, according to an "Executive Office" reprentative speaking on Mr Rowe's behalf, Euro Car Parks is not an M&S contractor at the King Street, Penrith, Food Hall.

 It is instead a business which owns land at that location upon which it operates a car park for its own financial gain.

The implications of that statement are so obvious, I'm not going to tire myself by reprising them here in detail; suffice to point out:

*  Marks & Spencer Chief Executive says no Marks & Spencer's car park exists at Marks & Spencer, Penrith;

 *Euro Car Parks send out one threatening letter after another, citing the existence of a Marks & Spencer's Penrith car park as the foundation of a contract which, it alleges, has been broken.

 And yet. . . no car park. No contract. Absence of the former kills off existence of the latter. Every single threat made by Euro Car Parks, including its letter to me,  is based on a lie.

 Please note that I'm talking about the situation in Penrith alone.  I am certainly not getting your Penrith Food Hall mixed up with your Kendal store, where Euro Car Parks figures in another Marks & Spencer Public Relations disaster:  https://www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news/17703804.fury-over-car-park-operation-at-marks-and-spencer-store-in-kendal/

 Whilst on the topic of links, here's another: https://www.eurocarparks.com/

 Not only does that link go merely to the Euro Car Parks  website ("internationally renowned for its first class parking services, instantly recognisable and highly respected brand. . . assisting 500,000 motorists a day") it also leads to ECP's question:

"Can we lease / manage or buy your car park /land?" 

 The answer to which, from Marks & Spencer, may perhaps at some time past have been "yes".

 But whether "MY Customer Service" is ever going to actually tell me, who knows?

 The full picture of how it came to be that "the Penrith car park is actually owned and operated by a third party, Euro Car Parks" (I'm quoting from the February 18th email to me  by the Chief Executive's spokesperson) is something which, it seems, will only become apparent at some stage in the future, seeing as how both Marks & Spencer's "Executive Office" and Marks & Spencer's"My CustomerService" appear, inexplicably, to wish to keep well clear of the subject right now.

 In response to my provision of photographic evidence of Euro Car Parks' claim to be "acting on behalf of M&S" -- a statement on the Penrith car park signage that in the circumstances can only be fraudulent -- I was treated with a patronising dismissiveness appropriate to the ill-advised treatment of a senile eejit daft enough to have submitted his holiday snaps (of a supermarket car park?!) to M&S head office in hope of the adulation of strangers ("I would like to thank you for taking the time to take the photographs", from a member of "Executive Team, Your M&S Customer Service" , February 20th last).

 With topic evasion as  blatant yet as clumsy as that, it's no wonder I've given up waiting for M&S to properly explain itself.

 I am instead in the process of making my concern known to  entities and agencies of influence and opinion far outside Marks & Spencer's headquarters building, including but not limited to the following:

* regional Press

* regional government and

* regional Parliamentary representation.

 My concern is that a company operating in Penrith town centre without any record that I can find of paying a single penny in Business Rates is -- based on written evidence from Marks & Spencer -- engaged in  systematic criminal fraud. It is claiming to act on behalf of Marks & Spencer by operating a car park (which Marks & Spencer denies owning) and is raking in money from the vulnerable, elderly and easily intimidated by dint of threatening letters about the breach of a non-existent contract relating to a non-existent location.

 My concern is that Marks & Spencer as a company is well aware of the distress and the anguish being caused to its customers but is entirely indifferent. The Penrith store was, in the words of an employee to my wife and myself, having to deal with so many customers "coming in and complaining they'd got a parking fine when they didn't even know the time limit had been reduced" that the store had to erect a notice at its rear entrance telling customers not to bother it but go talk to Euro Car Parks instead.

 So much for "MY" Customer Service. Right.

 Whilst you mull over the significance of that, I'd also direct your attention to the attached copy of a reader's letter published in Penrith's Cumberland and Westmorland Herald newspaper, a shocking yet perhaps not untypical example of the treatment meted out by companies like Euro Car Parks to the vulnerable and the easily intimidated.

 And yes. . . they paid up. When really, they shouldn't have done. But they were terrified, at their age, of having to appear before some sort of Judge in some kind of Court -- precisely the kind of terror upon which the likes of Euro Car Parks and Debt Recovery Plus thrive.

 I have no idea how many targets of unsupportable threatening letters exist in Penrith and the surrounding district have paid up, but perhaps a police investigation will discover that. And perhaps Marks & Spencer, in an act of overdue customer caring, will refund the monies all those victims have lost to a busines which brazenly claims to be "acting on behalf of M&S" -- even though your company's top management assures me it isn't.

I look forward to hearing of M&S's eventual generosity, coinciding as it might well do with receipt by the DVLA of my written request for Euro Car Parks Ltd's access to DVLA records to be permanently, irrevocably terminated as a result of its activities at 22-24 King Street, Penrith.

 Meantime, I am calling a halt to this correspondence as it is serving no purpose and taxing my physical and mental reserves to an unnecessary degree.

 I am being readmitted to hospital tomorrow, so there is no need for you to reply to this email. I regard the discussion between myself and Marks & Spencer as closed; if the company wishes to explain itself to others in due course, I'll catch up with the news then in the Court of Public Opinion..

 Sincerely yours,

 

 

beamerguy

Cark   ,,,,, a brilliant letter 
No doubt they will reply but will it be in time before they go bust as such poor customer service could well dictate

Cark

Back again.

Another update, seeing as how Debt Recovery Plus, the ostensibly independent debt collection agency that has no connection with London-based Euro Car Parks other than as a contractor based in Dukinfield, Cheshire, even though the reverse of its envelope bears the request: 'If undelivered, please return to PO Box 61278, London N17 1DS', which I think is actually ECP's own return address, have sent me another missive which arrived in this morning's post.

It seems to me to be thuggery typical of the knuckle-draggers active in the so-called private parking sector; I'm attaching it here (personal details edited out) by way of information for those who may yet never have encountered correspondence of this kind: the pressure, the threats, and very probably, the downright lies (it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Euro Car Parks actually owns and operates Debt Recovery Plus, seeing as how both have Board-level strong links with Manchester and neighbouring Stockport and Dukinfield) and that the correspondence is therefore a pretence.

The calibre of its content can perhaps be best gauged from the fact that the (probably fictitious signatory) cannot even spell 'Abigail'; as to the mention of Supreme Court legal precedent, that's utter nonsense, relating as it does to a single aspect of a single, irrelevant case.)

Debt Recovery Plus has tried this kind of intimidation before in its earlier letter; all that's new in this is the explicit threat of obtaining recovery of its legal costs, which I suppose it's actually there to ramp up the fear factor.

The letter has been filed. Tempting though it is to acknowledge it, I've no intention of bothering. Debt Recovery Plus may well send out yet further reminders, all of which will be ignored. I'll only react when learning of an actual, rather than threatened, civil action, and that will be to the Court, not the illiterates of Dukinfield.

Meanwhile, the dossier I've put together about all this has gone to a friend in the appropriate local authority for passing on to the Chief Executive. Obviously, no further word has come from M&S, for which I'm glad.

Again, thanks to everyone for their interest, support and encouragement. I will only update this thread if any tangible development occurs; I've taken up enough space here and enough people's time without adding unnecessarily to that.

Castle

You have left the PCN number showing.

D_P_Dance

That is just another debt collector's bovine excrement  OP,  why have you posted it?

nosferatu1001

Cark - I would send Marks and Spencer a Letter Before Claim for breach of the Equality Act 2010

A sum not in excess of 5k at court but you can have the low low price of
- cancelling the PCN with ECP, which you as principal CAN do
- apologising for your misleading emails stating you do not own the land, when all evidence shows otherwise 
- a mere 500 quid donation to *pick a charity of your choice*? Sound good here OP?
You require agreement within 14 days else you WILL lay a claim at court. To put it bluntly, you are a service provider failing in your legal duties, and this cannot be denied. You have an absolute legal duty to provide "reasonable adjustments" as per... and this has not been met b y you or your agents actions in creating a uniform, inflexible time limit with NO instructions on how the required "reasoanble adjustment" you MUST ensure is availaible can be applied to any driver with protected characteristics. You have no excuse that you did not know, as you are required to anticipate the discrimination your single time limit imposes, and deal with the indirect discrimination this causes. You failed to do so. 
Should you fail to settle, I will require a set of dates when an Officer of thec ompany will not be avaiable to appear in court, to be cross examined about your companies misrepresentartions and failures to meet their obligations. This will be compelled via witness summons. 
Adddress this to the CEO and to the legal department. 

beamerguy

Cark ......  I have enjoyed reading your communication with M&S and very surprised that the CEO has dramatically reduced his company to the level of a scam. 

Why ignore DRP ?  They are rogue traders full of verbal Diarrhoea

Tell them that you know their letter is utter rubbish and meaningless. Ask them on what legal authority they have to add on unknown amounts and if they cannot answer, to pass this back to the PPC to answer. Also remind them that their knowledge of the Beavis case is highly flawed and makes DRP look nonsensical. As such you will not be dealing or paying DRP who claim false amounts.

Will they reply ???   well there is no legal authority they can claim, neither can the PPC.
In my book if you receive cr*p ... you feed it back to the sender.
Any unanswered letter will of course be available to the court and for a judge to ask the same questions
Use your knowledge from this site to have fun with these excrement throwers