Claim Form received - VCS - WON - For the second time!

Coupon-mad

I would do the covering text.  You must also copy in VCS.

nosferatu1001

I would reiterate how late the C has been , and that they breached ther order of judge x made on date y 

lyndonp59

I was wondering about putting this paragraph below into the Supplementary WS. Bad idea or not? Is it too pedantic?

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In paragraph 12 the Claimant describes the ANPR camera system, however these cameras can only give an approximate duration on entering and exiting the car park based upon the time set on each camera. The Claimant has not shown any evidence that the two cameras in the ANPR system are synchronised in time with each other. Looking at the images on page 52, if the “In” camera was slow by a few seconds and the “Out” camera merely fast by just one second, the result on the Parking Charge Notice on page 51 would show as Entry being 17:38 and Exit as 19:55, a difference of two minutes. There is no way of knowing from the evidence as to how far out of sync the cameras were on the day and it could well be more than two minutes as in my example.

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lyndonp59

We got a letter from the court giving the telephone hearing for 7th January. Had to email them back with 48 hours of receipt with a phone and email address. We also added that I will be my son's Lay Representative on the same phone number. I just need to run through it all and make some notes prior to the hearing.

Anyway, just a little aside to this...he got an email back a few days later asking for the phone and email address again. He could have done that but it was odd as they should have had it and it would like he had not complied, (plus we had an issue where they sent another DQ form discussed a few pages into this thread where there were various discussions as to why they might have requested this, and it turned out when he spoke to them they didn't know why it had been sent as they had the original all the time!).

So he rang them and they said they hadn't got his email and to reply back to their email and include a screenshot of the original email he had sent. He did that and then rang them back to check they actually had got it. This time somebody else answered and found the email he had just sent in their spam folder and also the other, original email he had sent a few days earlier was in there too! He also checked with them they had his Supplementary WS which they said they did. It pays to speak directly with them.

Le_Kirk

Wow, they set up those e-mail address specifically for these hearings so there should be no spam filters.  Those spam merchants are quick off the mark!

lyndonp59

Le_Kirk said:

Wow, they set up those e-mail address specifically for these hearings so there should be no spam filters.  Those spam merchants are quick off the mark!

It was actually the general enquiries email address that can be found on the Sheffield Court web page that we had emailed initially to ask if they accepted WS by email and have used since for emails. I just found it a bit bizarre they had not checked it, especially as the subject line was setup exactly as requested on the letter i.e.hearing date, case number, names of the parties. At the back of the letter it also said to include "REMOTE HEARING" must be on the subject line (and Judge if known) so we included that to be sure (but not the judge)

lyndonp59

Well today was the day. The call was supposed to be at High Noon (quite appropriate for a showdown with VCS!) but it didn't come until after 12:10pm. We had District Judge Heppell who seemed a very decent guy and put me at ease straight away. He had all the info my son had sent to court and knew I was to be the Lay Rep on the same phone number and was quite OK with that. He went on to say that VCS weren't on the call as they had not provided  a phone number and had not been in contact with the court today, which I initially thought great, he'll dismiss it, but he said that he would take their case on their papers which concerned me a little especially when he said that just because we didn't agree with his final decision it wasn't a reason to appeal.

He started the recording at 12:14 and it was all over in under 10 minutes....case dismissed! I was phoning my wife at 12:26!

So the actual hearing:-

• I started off with the issue of VCS filing their WS a week late and actually dated 2 days after the submisison deadline, after we had written to the court asking for them to strike it out. (detail in previous posts). He understood but wasn't going to strike it out, but maybe with that and the fact they hadn't provided a phone number as requested would have made him question VCS's integrity in this matter(?)

• He then asked what we had to say. I said that throughout this 5 and half years VCS had stated the breach was 19 minutes over the 2 hours allowed but never acknowledged the grace period allowed. At this point he said he understood they were normally 10 minutes and therefore it was 9 minutes over. I then went on to explain the fact in the ICP CoP there were two grace periods allowed, entry where you park and read the signs and one on exit. I pointed him to the entrance photo in the WS which clearly shows “Any vehicle/driver remaining in this car park 10 minutes after entry is subject to and agrees in full to the Terms and Conditions”, therefore the 2 hours in the T&Cs starts after that 10 minutes.
  
• He was asking at this point if I was saying that signage shown in their WS was not the actual signage and I asked if I could come onto the signage issue afterwards and I explained again directing him to the specific exhibit where it is shown about the initial 10 minutes.
  

• Straight away he came back and said even he could work that out, 10+10 =20 which is more than the 19, and I think he then said being as VCS aren't present to argue it, case dismissed!

• Pretty chuffed at this point! He then asked if we had anything else to add, where I brought up costs. He said what I expected him to say, that they can only be awarded for unreasonable behaviour. I then said my son had had to take time off work for the hearing and he asked how much was I proposing and I said £95. There was a pause which I thought he might counter with something lower but he came back and said he thought that £95 attendance allowance was reasonable. Result!

• Even if VCS were there to argue the entry grace period I was going to use "contra proferentem" as the persuasive point in our favour.

So we never got onto the signage I also had lined up and all sorts of other issues like the contract where I had a document from VCS obtained by SAR that was signed by their employee saying they did not have a contract to issue PCNs (on an earlier post)

Hopefully VCS won't appeal.

So even though this won it on the initial grace period argument, I would never have done the Defence and WS with all the additional points I didn't need to use in the end without help on here, which also gave me confidence in handling it, so I would like to offer my sincere thanks to all that have helped, especially C-M, as I couldn't have done it without your input, help and information on here.

Must say, it would have been interesting to see what his views were on the other points on signage, abuse of process, contract etc.

I really don't understand VCS not bothering about going on the call or providing phone details but I won't lose any sleep over them.To be honest I actually thought they might send a discontinue letter this week but glad they didn't now!

N0tme

I won against VCS mid December and they paid up my £95 before Christmas - hopefully your case will be the same with no appeal - another win against VCS!

nosferatu1001

Well done on this - but again, at what point is a claimant unreasonable? 

They break 2 court orders and that isn't unreasonable?

beamerguy

Well done, seems like VCS zapped themselves

But hey, no reason for the judge to mention the fake £60, his mind was already made up.
What with BWLegal complaining about judges and VCS/EXCEL and Renshaw-smith the boss, doing the same especially when he said a judge was not fit for purpose a while back, the lesson still has not been learned ....... You don't bite the hand you want to feed you"

So we know the Renshaw-smith organisation is down 80% and to add to their woes, another £95  leaves their side. With national lockdown affecting the VCS favourite haunts, the advice must be for Renshaw-smith, .... stop wasting your money on stupid claims, not going to work any more