Car lease company paid private parking company's parking charge & sent me the invoice to pay them.

Okell

Hoenir said:

Okell said:

The lease company receive an "invoice" from a private parking company and without referring it to the OP or indeed without conducting any investigation at all into the validity of the invoice, they pay it and recharge the OP without giving him an opportunity to challenge it.  And they charge him an admin fee for doing so.

From the leasing companies perspective. How do they recoup the full cost of providing this administrative service to customers?  Easy to say not my problem. Pass the buck. Someone has to pay these costs though. 

If the lease company does their job properly, exercises reasonable care and skill and correctly transfers liability to the OP as they should do, and they incur some marginal admin cost thereby, I don't have a problem with them charging the OP a reasonable fee that does not exceed the actual costs they've incurred.  Or they could choose to treat it as an inevitable business overhead.  It's up to them how they treat it.

What I do have a problem with is the lease company charging the OP an admin fee after the lease company has (1) applied an unfair contract term; (2) not exercised reasonable care and skill in providing the service; and (3) thereby deprived the OP of his opportunity to challenge the parking invoice legally.

Why would anyone pay a fee for that "service"?

Hoenir

Jumblebumble said:

Hoenir said:

Okell said:

The lease company receive an "invoice" from a private parking company and without referring it to the OP or indeed without conducting any investigation at all into the validity of the invoice, they pay it and recharge the OP without giving him an opportunity to challenge it.  And they charge him an admin fee for doing so.

From the leasing companies perspective. How do they recoup the full cost of providing this administrative service to customers?  Easy to say not my problem. Pass the buck. Someone has to pay these costs though. 

I think you may be mixing up the charging of an admin fee of say £25.00 which is ample to cover the admin costs of passing on the Ops name to a parking company and then the lease company have no further liability and the fact that the leasing company settled the "fine" which denied 

No I'm not. The fact you say "ample" reinforces my earlier comment. (Of that £25. Vat payable to the HMRC accounts for £5 alone). 

Ectophile

Hoenir said:

Okell said:

The lease company receive an "invoice" from a private parking company and without referring it to the OP or indeed without conducting any investigation at all into the validity of the invoice, they pay it and recharge the OP without giving him an opportunity to challenge it.  And they charge him an admin fee for doing so.

From the leasing companies perspective. How do they recoup the full cost of providing this administrative service to customers?  Easy to say not my problem. Pass the buck. Someone has to pay these costs though. 

It shouldn't beyond the capabilities of a large company to:

• Make sure their terms and conditions are clearly written, so as not to leave room for doubt in cases like this.
• Set out in their terms and conditions what fees they will charge for different services.

I don't have much sympathy for a large finance company that can't do things right.

Okell

I find it difficult to believe that the actual marginal admin costs of responding to a private parking company's invoice by supplying the information necessary to transfer liability to the hirer could amount to even £20.

MobileSaver

Okell said:

I don't have a problem with them charging the OP a reasonable fee that does not exceed the actual costs they've incurred.

Okell said:

I find it difficult to believe that the actual marginal admin costs of responding to a private parking company's invoice by supplying the information necessary to transfer liability to the hirer could amount to even £20.

A genuine question: Is there a legal precedent or other reason why you think a company should only be able to charge the hirer their actual cost incurred if they have to respond to third-parties due to the hirer's actions? (Ignore the probably uncommon situation here where the hirer may not be at fault, I'd guess most requests are where the hirer has in fact erred.)

Pretty much all businesses are run to make money so it's seems wrong that a company can't make a reasonable profit on top of their actual costs if they're having to do more work due to a hirer's actions or inactions.

sjs2013

MobileSaver said:

Okell said:

I don't have a problem with them charging the OP a reasonable fee that does not exceed the actual costs they've incurred.

Okell said:

I find it difficult to believe that the actual marginal admin costs of responding to a private parking company's invoice by supplying the information necessary to transfer liability to the hirer could amount to even £20.

A genuine question: Is there a legal precedent or other reason why you think a company should only be able to charge the hirer their actual cost incurred if they have to respond to third-parties due to the hirer's actions? (Ignore the probably uncommon situation here where the hirer may not be at fault, I'd guess most requests are where the hirer has in fact erred.)

Pretty much all businesses are run to make money so it's seems wrong that a company can't make a reasonable profit on top of their actual costs if they're having to do more work due to a hirer's actions or inactions.

No one is telling them to do it for free or not make any money. If their actual cost is £10 they can charge their customers £12 & make couple of quid profit for a few mins work. But the point is they need to write it down clearly & unambiguously in the contract terms. I've posted the full redacted contract & tell me where it specifies an amount. For comparison I posted same part of the terms from another leaser few posts earlier & see they clearly specify the amount. 

MobileSaver

sjs2013 said:

No one is telling them to do it for free or not make any money.

That was exactly what @Okell suggested ("a reasonable fee that does not exceed the actual costs they've incurred") which is why I queried it.

sjs2013 said:

But the point is they need to write it down clearly & unambiguously in the contract terms.

Does an admin fee need to be explicitly spelled out as long as it's reasonable? 

There are probably a multitude of  different reasons a company has to respond to a third-party regarding a hirer; some responses may take a few minutes, others may take much, much longer - should the company be required to list every possible reason with a multitude of different fees?

I don't know about you but I wouldn't get out of bed for £20 so if a company decided to charge anything between say £10 and £30 for having to do additional work because of something a hirer did or didn't do then I think you'd struggle to say that wasn't a reasonable charge.

sjs2013

MobileSaver said:

sjs2013 said:

No one is telling them to do it for free or not make any money.

That was exactly what @Okell suggested ("a reasonable fee that does not exceed the actual costs they've incurred") which is why I queried it.

sjs2013 said:

But the point is they need to write it down clearly & unambiguously in the contract terms.

Does an admin fee need to be explicitly spelled out as long as it's reasonable? 

There are probably a multitude of  different reasons a company has to respond to a third-party regarding a hirer; some responses may take a few minutes, others may take much, much longer - should the company be required to list every possible reason with a multitude of different fees?

I don't know about you but I wouldn't get out of bed for £20 so if a company decided to charge anything between say £10 and £30 for having to do additional work because of something a hirer did or didn't do then I think you'd struggle to say that wasn't a reasonable charge.

One person's reasonable is another person's ripoff. Hence it needs to be written down in TCs & agreed between both parties. There can't be multitude of different reasons for what they need to disclose a driver's details. There are only a handful of such reasons & they only need to prepare the TC once.

Undervalued

Okell said:

I find it difficult to believe that the actual marginal admin costs of responding to a private parking company's invoice by supplying the information necessary to transfer liability to the hirer could amount to even £20.

Maybe. However they are charging a "reasonable fee" which can obviously be more than their bare costs. As ever, lawyers could earn (far bigger) fees debating what is "reasonable" but I think you would struggle to argue that £25 isn't reasonable.

That is of course separate to the debate about whether they should have carried out this action at all. If they shouldn't then there would be no fee, if they should then I think it is a "reasonable fee" set out in the lease agreement.

Unwelcome yes, unreasonable no.

Jenni_D

Remember that the people actioning these requests are already employed, so their costs are already borne - the lease company isn't having to employ additional people just to cope with this task. And these same people are also (usually) a cost burden - their activities rarely involve revenue generation (except where such "admin charges" are levied), so charging (a reasonable approximation of) actual costs is still financially beneficial to the lease company.

And ... such costs should be clearly identified in the T&Cs, whether it is a flat rate or a sliding scale depending on reason; as mentioned before, one person's reasonable is another person's outrageous scam. And the lack of clarity also gives scope for the lease company to drastically revise the charged amount without the consumer having any real choice in the matter. (Except to pursue it via court under unfair contract term legislation).