Received a Debt Recovery Plus Letter but no letters before!!

Fruitcake

Hellothree said:

Coupon-mad said:

Send a complaint (NOT AN APPEAL) online to Initial Parking, telling them that the keeper received no PCN, and quote the new bit in the BPA Code of Practice (Feb 2024) that requires them to reissue a PCN, if not received.

Tell them you suspect that DR Plus are doing all the back office work & letters, and it seems that they only sent a debt demand, which has happened reportedly before, in a case the BPA handled about Smart Parking about 18 months ago.  Smart had to apologise & issue PCNs late.

Then escalate all this to the BPA.

DO NOT write that you expect them to be able to prove a PCN was sent because that hands Initial the easy answer 'the Code does not require us to send letters by a trackable service'.  Use my words above.

Assuming PLAN A doesn't work first.

Hello, I am trying to find "the new bit in the BPA Code of Practice (Feb 2024) that requires them to reissue a PCN, if not received." and I cannot, do you know which page/section it is on please? Thanks

I can't find anything specific concerning this, but I think it is reasonable to believe this is what is intended by the following paragraph,


"23.8 You must respond to appeals within 28 days or, where a decision on the appeal is not concluded within 28 days, you must acknowledge the appeal and confirm the timeframe for concluding it, including the supply of additional information.

You must have a process for considering appeals received outside of the normal 28-day period allowed for lodging an appeal where the appellant provides evidence of exceptional circumstances for the appeal not being lodged within the normal timeframes – where the addressee only discovers and can show that a parking charge notice has been issued in their name after the 28- day period the period must restart and any enforcement, excluding court action, must be paused." 


However, typical of the unregulated private parking industry, the new CoP puts the onus on the motorist to prove they didn't receive something rather than putting the onus on the PPC to prove they did send it.

Hellothree

1505grandad said:

Oh dear  -  had to raise myself from my recuperation bed to point out the obvious anomoly:-

" I received no notice at the time I parked, therefore I must receive a notice within 14 days of when I parked."

"You cannot, therefore, transfer liability for the alleged charge from the driver at the time to me, the keeper."

Wouldn't it make sense to instead of trying to ridicule someone on an online help forum, you instead attempted to help - just as you have needed quite a lot of advice in the past? 

Luckily, in my state of panic, I did not send the email above. 
Have a great day!

Trainerman

Hellothree said:

1505grandad said:

Oh dear  -  had to raise myself from my recuperation bed to point out the obvious anomoly:-

" I received no notice at the time I parked, therefore I must receive a notice within 14 days of when I parked."

"You cannot, therefore, transfer liability for the alleged charge from the driver at the time to me, the keeper."

Wouldn't it make sense to instead of trying to ridicule someone on an online help forum, you instead attempted to help - just as you have needed quite a lot of advice in the past? 

Luckily, in my state of panic, I did not send the email above. 
Have a great day!

To be fair, @Hellothree , I have noticed over my time on the forum that @1505grandad is very good at spotting typos and mistakes in grammar and meaning. This has been to the benefit of many people in ensuring that writings are accurate and do not 'drop the victim in it'.

I don't detect any ridicule either. Perhaps your heightened anxiety is a factor ?

Stay with 1505Grandad and the forum. The advice is very sound.

Hellothree

Trainerman said:

Hellothree said:

1505grandad said:

Oh dear  -  had to raise myself from my recuperation bed to point out the obvious anomoly:-

" I received no notice at the time I parked, therefore I must receive a notice within 14 days of when I parked."

"You cannot, therefore, transfer liability for the alleged charge from the driver at the time to me, the keeper."

Wouldn't it make sense to instead of trying to ridicule someone on an online help forum, you instead attempted to help - just as you have needed quite a lot of advice in the past? 

Luckily, in my state of panic, I did not send the email above. 
Have a great day!

To be fair, @Hellothree , I have noticed over my time on the forum that @1505grandad is very good at spotting typos and mistakes in grammar and meaning. This has been to the benefit of many people in ensuring that writings are accurate and do not 'drop the victim in it'.

I don't detect any ridicule either. Perhaps your heightened anxiety is a factor ?

Stay with 1505Grandad and the forum. The advice is very sound.

To be fair, "Oh dear  -  had to raise myself from my recuperation bed to point out the obvious anomoly" wasn't exactly helpful at this moment in time, I'm sure you can understand that. The email above was copied from another website - not my own words. 

Anyway, as an update and after talking to Citizen's Advice, this is the email I ended up sending Initial Parking Ltd:

"Dear Sirs,

I have received your Notice to Keeper ___ for vehicle VRM ______

This is the first time I have seen this notice. 

You have failed to comply with the requirements of Schedule 4 of The Protection Of Freedoms Act 2012 namely, but not limited to, failing to hand the notice to the keeper, failing to leave it at the current address and failing to send it by post within the relevant period (14 days) as prescribed by section 8 (4) (a) and (b) of the Act. You cannot, therefore, transfer liability for the alleged charge from the driver at the time to me, the keeper.

There is no legal requirement to name the driver at the time and I will not be doing so.

I do not expect to hear from you again, or your debt collectors, except to confirm that no further action will be taken on this matter and my personal details have been removed from your records.

Yours,

_______"


So we will see what they come back with.

Coupon-mad

Please don't speak to the CAB again about this.  Sadly the CAB are utterly clueless about private parking cases.

Also @Fruitcake found for you, and posted with bold lettering, the BPA CoP bit you should have quoted.

I wouldn't have been talking about the POFA at all, I'd have said what I advised you to say earlier and added the BPA CoP clause.  You only discovered the (alleged) PCN today which is well past the 28 days.

Hellothree

Coupon-mad said:

Please don't speak to the CAB again about this.  Sadly the CAB are utterly clueless about private parking cases.

Also @Fruitcake found for you, and posted with bold lettering, the BPA CoP bit you should have quoted.

I wouldn't have been talking about the POFA at all, I'd have said what I advised you to say earlier and added the BPA CoP clause.  You only discovered the (alleged) PCN today which is well past the 28 days.

Do you think it's worth sending them another email with the BPA CoP bit I was meant to quote? Or shall I leave it now? They haven't replied to me yet. Argh, I'm so confused by it all. Do you think that email I've sent won't work? 

The CAB advised to say about the POFA but I didn't know they had no idea about private parking cases. 

Fruitcake

The operator may well decide the keeper has sent a complaint that they consider not to be an appeal, then delay response until the BPA's made up appeal deadline has passed, then tell the keeper they are now out of time to appeal.

You could send the standard appeal in blue text from the NEWBIES, plus a statement that the keeper never received the NTK then include the relevant paragraph from the CoP.

Hellothree

Fruitcake said:

The operator may well decide the keeper has sent a complaint that they consider not to be an appeal, then delay response until the BPA's made up appeal deadline has passed, then tell the keeper they are now out of time to appeal.

You could send the standard appeal in blue text from the NEWBIES, plus a statement that the keeper never received the NTK then include the relevant paragraph from the CoP.

All done, thanks for your help

Hellothree

Hello, I received an email back from Initial Parking today saying this:"Good morning,Thank you for your email.

Due to the length of time the Parking Charge Notice has been open, this has now been passed to a Debt Recovery agent.

Please contact them directly regarding this Parking Charge Notice.

https://www.debtrecoveryplus.co.uk/contact-us/"

Please can anyone help as to what steps I make now?

Coupon-mad

Hellothree said:

Hello, I received an email back from Initial Parking today saying this:

"Good morning,

Thank you for your email.

Due to the length of time the Parking Charge Notice has been open, this has now been passed to a Debt Recovery agent.

Please contact them directly regarding this Parking Charge Notice.

No.

Do what I suggested on Feb 8th (back on page one). Make it clear it is a formal complaint and say what I said (exact words) with the right quote of the BPA CoP.