Gatwick Drop Off - Disputing Costs but not Fees

SeagullDave

My daughter has received a standard letter and now a final demand from a particular "Specialist in Legal Recoveries" (not sure if I am allowed to name them) for non-payment of the fee at Gatwick Airport Drop Off/Pick Up zone...   the £5 for 10mins fee.

The first letter jumps the cost from £5 to £170 and although she did use the zone to drop me & her mum at the holiday (and then not pay within 24hrs and when we came home from holiday and reminded her, she was locked out from paying on the website ... and then stupidly did nothing!) so isn't really disputing the event, just the unreasonable nature of the subsequent penalty.

We have written to the Airport Owner, their customer service agents & got her local MP to also petition on her behalf, the initial letter has now escalated to "Final Demand".   In the letter to the owner, we have cited the lack of "on-site" payment options and closure of the online payment window as well as the [seemingly usual] lack of decent signage mentioning the massive escalation in fees following non-payment.  Her email was an offer to settle the original fee £5 plus "reasonable" costs of £10 for a total settlement of £15.

What are the best next steps?   Her MP has responded and agreed to write on her behalf, but there has been no response from the airport or their customer services partner (or anything from her MP confirming a response to him).

At this point, she has not yet engaged with the legal firm, so feeling that needs to be the next step, but some expert advice would be appreciated?  

TLDR; She's not disputing the actual fee just the escalation in costs at 3000%+  so this doesn't really fit the standard templates (or does it?   should she be disputing the whole thing?)

Thanks in advance!

Grizebeck

Of course it fits the template why wouldnt it

D_P_Dance

Of course you are able to name them, how else can we understand the problem.   

The added £70 is almost certainly unlawful, the £100 may or may not get past a judge, depending on many factors  Everything is explained in the newbies

SeagullDave

D_P_Dance said:

Of course you are able to name them, how else can we understand the problem.   

The added £70 is almost certainly unlawful, the £100 may or may not get past a judge, depending on many factors  Everything is explained in the newbies

BW Legal is the firm.   

B789

@SeagullDave Welcome to the forum. Unfortunately, you are probably a bit late in coming here as you have almost certainly thrown away the easy option of getting this thrown out. Please read, re-read and read again, the Newbies thread to fully understand your initial mistake. You will get help and advice on how to proceed but you also need to educate yourself on the process and the steps involved.

Am I right in assuming that when you contacted the "Airport Owner", "the customer service agents" and your MP, you identified the driver? Have you been in touch with NCP and appealed already?

If you'd come here before doing any appeal or contacting NCP or their debt collectors or anyone at the airport and having read and understood the content of the Newbies thread that once you've identified the driver, they will chase the driver for all they've got. Because airport land is "non-relevant" land and covered by airport bylaws, POFA cannot apply and therefore, they cannot transfer liability from the driver to the keeper. If they don't know who the driver is then there is nothing else they can do. They are not allowed to presume anything and they don't have a database of every driver in the country to identify someone.

This could have been thrown out with a simple appeal along the lines of:

Dear NCP,

Your PCN is not POFA compliant. As the registered keeper, I am not willing to identify the driver. Cancel the PCN now or waste your money at POPLA where this will be thrown out.

Yours sincerely,

Not Another Mug

The fact that the sum they are trying to scam you out of is so high, is not going to win you any appeal. You are now in the clutches of the system and depending on where you are in the appeals process, you will have to read up what the next steps are in the Newbies thread near the top of this forum.

SeagullDave

B789 said:

@SeagullDave Welcome to the forum. Unfortunately, you are probably a bit late in coming here as you have almost certainly thrown away the easy option of getting this thrown out. Please read, re-read and read again, the Newbies thread to fully understand your initial mistake. You will get help and advice on how to proceed but you also need to educate yourself on the process and the steps involved.

Am I right in assuming that when you contacted the "Airport Owner", "the customer service agents" and your MP, you identified the driver? Have you been in touch with NCP and appealed already?

If you'd come here before doing any appeal or contacting NCP or their debt collectors or anyone at the airport and having read and understood the content of the Newbies thread that once you've identified the driver, they will chase the driver for all they've got. Because airport land is "non-relevant" land and covered by airport bylaws, POFA cannot apply and therefore, they cannot transfer liability from the driver to the keeper. If they don't know who the driver is then there is nothing else they can do. They are not allowed to presume anything and they don't have a database of every driver in the country to identify someone.

This could have been thrown out with a simple appeal along the lines of:

Dear NCP,

Your PCN is not POFA compliant. As the registered keeper, I am not willing to identify the driver. Cancel the PCN now or waste your money at POPLA where this will be thrown out.

Yours sincerely,

Not Another Mug

The fact that the sum they are trying to scam you out of is so high, is not going to win you any appeal. You are now in the clutches of the system and depending on where you are in the appeals process, you will have to read up what the next steps are in the Newbies thread near the top of this forum.

The initial response hasn't included any details regarding the driver...   it was done as my daughter solely acknowledging she was the keeper and everything was in careful language in that respect.   Thankfully.

This advice is great though and greatly appreciated and does back up her next action which has been the request for all evidence showing she was the driver and that the signs were visible etc.

Johnersh

There is an interesting element to this. The system precludes payments out of time precisely so that they can litigate. There is no payment phone line or machine, its all Web portal. The scheme is designed to penalise a forgetful motorist, usually unfamiliar with the site and then dives straight onto litigation, which is wholly disproportionate. It's a penalty in the true sense of the word and beavis is unlikely to help them. 

Coupon-mad

The Airport will accept £15.  It's been done before.  The signage is atrociously inadequate.

Keep putting pressure on them, especially getting your MP to wrote to the Airport (not to NCP or BW Legal).  

No paying more than £15.

No panic about court claims.

Seeeeeeeaaaaaagulllllls!! 

Le_Kirk

Johnersh said:

There is an interesting element to this. The system precludes payments out of time precisely so that they can litigate. There is no payment phone line or machine, its all Web portal. The scheme is designed to penalise a forgetful motorist, usually unfamiliar with the site and then dives straight onto litigation, which is wholly disproportionate. It's a penalty in the true sense of the word and beavis is unlikely to help them. 

Coupon-mad said:

The Airport will accept £15.  It's been done before.  The signage is atrociously inadequate.

How does one pay the fee without access to t'Internet?  At least the Dartford charge, when it went automatic and ANPR, allows you to phone and pay and it also set up systems in shops (not sure if that still works)!

B789

SeagullDave said:
The initial response hasn't included any details regarding the driver...   it was done as my daughter solely acknowledging she was the keeper and everything was in careful language in that respect.   Thankfully.

This advice is great though and greatly appreciated and does back up her next action which has been the request for all evidence showing she was the driver and that the signs were visible etc.

When you say that you "offered the 'owner' to settle for £15 plus the £5 fee", are you referring to an appeal to NCP or just correspondence with Gatwick Airport? It's not clear from your narrative whether you went through the whole appeal process of initial appeal to NCP and subsequent appeal through POPLA.

If you have actually been through the appeal process and been unsuccessful, what was the reason for rejection? If you haven't identified the driver as you claim, they cannot chase the registered keeper as there is no transfer of liability allowed.

Again, if you are sure the driver has not been identified and you've been unsuccessful through the appeals process you may as well ignore everything else unless you get an LoC/LBCCC. Unless you WANT to pay the £15.

If you've not identified the driver, why pay the £15? If they don't know who the driver is, where do you think they can go from here?