DCBL Court Claim to Discontinuation

KofiHarr

Hello All,

Although this is my first post on here, I have been using the advice and guidance on this forum for the past year following my run in with UKPC and DCBL

The advice on here has been of tremendous help especially from the likes of @Coupon-mad , so I thought it is only fair that I come out of the shadows and share my story if it helps others, even though it has been a frustrating one, it has a happy ending.

My nightmare first started on receipt of a letter from DCBL on the 21/01/2021 claiming I owed £160.00 for an unpaid parking charge issued by UKPC on the 16th February 2017! This was the first I had heard of this.

A SAR was sent off to UKPC, who sent back a bundle including a copy of the supposed parking charge, pictures of the charge on the car and subsequent letters they had apparently sent me.

After reviewing the docs and the dates it came to light that I wasn’t even the driver, it was my wife driving the car that day. The location was at my sister in laws house, which my wife had a visitors permit for but just forgot to put it on the dashboard. However, she did not remember ever seeing this ticket on the car. When we tried to relay this back to UKPC and DCBL, that we did have a permit just forgot display on that occasion, we even gave them the permit number but were told the appeal deadline had passed.

A few more chase letters from DCBL and then it went quiet until just over a month before the parking charge was 6 years old, I received a Claim Form from CCBC on 03rd January 2023.

Summary of the overall timeline

16/02/2017 UKPC Original ticket issued - £60.00

21/03/2017 UKPC reminder - £100.00

05/04/2017 UKPC final reminder sent - £100.00

21/01/2021 – 28/11/2022 First letter to Letter of claim from DCBL - £160.00

03/01/2023 Claim Form from CCBC - £329.56! (Claimed amount 244.56/Court Fee 35.00/Legal Representative Costs 50.00)

09/01/2023 – AOS

16/01/2023 – Defence sent

23/02/2023 – Case stayed by CCBC as DCBL did not meet deadline.

23/03/2023 – Case stay lifted! When I called to enquire why, I was told DCBL had paid the required fee to have the stay lifted.

05/04/2023 – DQ filed (deadline was 11/04/2023) Note: as of this date CCBC were dealing with DQ’s received on the 28/02/2023 and had a huge backlog.

05/05/2023 – Notice of Transfer of Proceedings received from CCBC – confirming it had been transferred to my local County Court – Croydon

01/07/2023 – Notice of Allocation to the small claims track (Hearing) received from Croydon County Court. Note: This letter did not have a hearing date, the only key date was for the claimant to file and serve reply by the 19/07/2023. It also mentioned sharing any documents including Witness Statements to be shared with the court and claimant 14 days before the hearing which will be confirmed in a different letter.

In between all this I had been receiving calls, emails from DCBL with offers to settle out of court and although I almost came close to taking this option, thanks to the advice on the forum I stood my ground and was adamant to see this to the very end!

As I was preparing my witness statement and waiting for a hearing date, low and behold on the following date I received the following!

14/07/2023 - Our client has instructed us to discontinue Court proceedings and close our file. Therefore, please find enclosed the Claimant’s N279 Notice of Discontinuance for your records.

How DCBL are able to put people through all this unnecessary stress and waste people and the courts time is just ridiculous.

Once again and big big thank you to all on here offering advice.

 @Umkomaas , another one to add to the discontinuation list 😊

 

 

rigolith

There should really be some costs paid when they discontinue at a late stage, after you already spent significant time on it.

KofiHarr

@rigolith, absolutely agree! The amount of time and effort that goes into this only for them to backout before the hearing and you get no costs back is just not right. 

Coupon-mad

Congrats on being one of hundreds on @Umkomaas' thread of DCBLegal discontinuances!

I am sure he will add you to the hall of fame tomorrow.  Well done!  A discontinuance = a win!

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!

And we hope that you are ready to respond to the final Government Public Consultation in the coming weeks? Anticipated to start THIS MONTH. 

Please come back here when it opens.

If you are not a regular reader, to be alerted you'll need to bookmark the thread by MSE_JC at the top of the forum and enable (on your profile) email alerts for 'bookmarked' threads.

Then join us when the Consultation opens. We need all MSE-reading victims of this horrific harassment and bullying by parking firms and their hired 'legals' to be heard loud and clear.

We all need to ram the nail in the coffin of the false £70 'fee' add-on, that funds the court claim and toxic litigation culture that runs rife through the parking industry, with their roboclaim 'legals' gaslighting conduct that fools people into paying £170 per PCN to line the pockets of the bullyboy hangers-on

See you back here in a couple of weeks please, if you and your motoring family want to stop this litigation rush by banning the £70 add-on fee that disproportionately funds the roboclaim 'legal' firms and enriches them in the millions.

It will only be open for a few weeks so please do come back to see what we are making of the DLUHC's analysis and what the questions look like that consumers need to answer.

Umkomaas

Once again and big big thank you to all on here offering advice.

 @Umkomaas , another one to add to the discontinuation list 😊 

Well done!  Off we go to the DCB Legal discontinuation thread of shame.

patient_dream

Well done for seeing off these utter timewasters.
It is more than clear that these idiotic claims are designed to scare the public. There is no merit in them and that is why DCBL keep on with their discontinuation chicken out joke of jokes

The MoJ must be very proud of this money terrorism they allow.
The courts must be sick to death with these rubbish extortion claims

Ask your MP to investigate with the MoJ the ABUSE of the County Courts system and indeed to make this public via the Media

AyeDubbleYoo

Nice one, I'm at the directions questionnaire stage myself.

The delays are much longer than your timeline so I guess the admin people must be swamped. So incredibly annoying that they are allowed to use court time like this... you'd think a company with a record of so many discontinuations would eventually lose their right to claim or something. 

Anyway, hopefully I will have another discontinuation to add eventually. 

patient_dream

AyeDubbleYoo said:

Nice one, I'm at the directions questionnaire stage myself.

The delays are much longer than your timeline so I guess the admin people must be swamped. So incredibly annoying that they are allowed to use court time like this... you'd think a company with a record of so many discontinuations would eventually lose their right to claim or something. 

Anyway, hopefully I will have another discontinuation to add eventually. 

Be patient and play this silly game with them

Umkomaas

AyeDubbleYoo said:

Nice one, I'm at the directions questionnaire stage myself.

The delays are much longer than your timeline so I guess the admin people must be swamped. So incredibly annoying that they are allowed to use court time like this... you'd think a company with a record of so many discontinuations would eventually lose their right to claim or something. 

Anyway, hopefully I will have another discontinuation to add eventually. 

Please write to your MP and ask them to raise this appalling waste of very stretched court resources to do much of the private parking sector's dirty work for them. 

I just so hope that the next phase of the roll out of the new Parking Code of Practice brings sense to this out of control situation of vexatious, unmerited court claims (and maybe there will be a sting in the tail as a consequence for the sector's cynical Judicial Reviews, dismissively challenging the will of Parliament. The road to anarchy!)  

JusticeWarrior

I am in the middle of a similar battle with DCBL acting for iPark Services Ltd.

The usual notice of discontinuance was served after a 2 year harassment campaign in which I got a CCJ (later overturned because I never received the court documents).

I am considerably out of pocket both financially and through the stress of the whole business so I have applied for my costs and the arguments are being heard on Monday 15th Jan, 2024, barring postponement of the hearing. DCBL have denied any accountability and refused all my claims for costs describing their abandonment of the litigation as a purely ‘commercial decision’, which I think actually describes their extortion racket perfectly.

i am desperately hoping for a decent judge but would appreciate evidence of the scale of this practice of last minute discontinuance since my legal argument hinges upon proving DCBL’s unreasonable behaviour / abuse of legal process.

Umkomaas

JusticeWarrior said:

I am in the middle of a similar battle with DCBL acting for iPark Services Ltd.

The usual notice of discontinuance was served after a 2 year harassment campaign in which I got a CCJ (later overturned because I never received the court documents).

I am considerably out of pocket both financially and through the stress of the whole business so I have applied for my costs and the arguments are being heard on Monday 15th Jan, 2024, barring postponement of the hearing. DCBL have denied any accountability and refused all my claims for costs describing their abandonment of the litigation as a purely ‘commercial decision’, which I think actually describes their extortion racket perfectly.

i am desperately hoping for a decent judge but would appreciate evidence of the scale of this practice of last minute discontinuance since my legal argument hinges upon proving DCBL’s unreasonable behaviour / abuse of legal process.

We've been keeping count since August 2022, so please have a look at the following thread. Please note, these are not all DCB Legal discontinuations, rather those involving people who have come to the forum for help; there will likely be others who have faced up to DCB Legal themselves outside of the forum. It's not possible to quantify that latter number.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6377263/dcb-legal-record-of-private-parking-court-claim-discontinuations/p1