Debt Recover Plus - Heathrow Drop off - Leased Car

mister_jm

Hi,

Didn't realise I had to pay £5 to drop off at Heathrow Terminal 2 drop off T2 - back in Feb.

It's a company car, which is leased.

First I heard was yesterday when my Company forwarded on the Debt Recovery Plus pay up or face court action £150.00 letter, courtesy of APCOA Parking (UK) Ltd.

Other posts rely on updated V5C as reason for not having received any prior notice, but I am not the registered keeper - the Lease company, ALD are.

Given advice not to contact debt collection company, who should I be contacting in the first instance over this?

Thanks in advance.

Fruitcake

Start with your employer, fleet manager or whoever is responsible for leasing the vehicle. Ask them if the lease company transferred liability to your company, or simply forwarded the NTK to them.

If the lease company did not transfer liability, then they remain liable for the charge. The law (the PoFA 2012) has been around for twelve years so they should know by now what to do with it.
If they did transfer liability, usually by filling in the tear off strip on the NTK and returning it to the PPC (APCOA), then the PPC should have sent a NTH to the hirer/lessee (your company) who should then deal with it.

If your company received a NTH, you need to find out what they did with it. 

APCOA never issue PoFA compliant NTKs, so the vehicle keeper (lease company) can never have been liable. They could have ignored it if they wished, although it is safer for them to transfer liability to the hirer/lessee in case APCOA change their process and start issuing court claims in the next six years.

If APCOA did issue a NTH to your company, it will not have been PoFA compliant, and therefore will be incapable of holding the hirer/lessee liable for the charge.

The most important thing is only the driver knows who was driving at the time, so their identity must never be revealed.
APCOA don't know who was driving, and the lease company do not know either. Your company (the hirer/lessee) could not have been the driver, so APCOA are stuck.

All this needs is for someone from your company to tell APCOA that this is a lease vehicle, the lessee is a company, the driver's identity will not be revealed, therefore APCOA should cancel now to save themselves money.
There is a letter dealing with this written by edna basher that can be found in the sticky Announcement for NEWBIES. There are three to choose from, including one from a feet manager, so pick the most appropriate letter and send that to APCOA. 

Your company should also instruct the lease company not to pay the charge under any circumstances, and that legal action will be taken against them if they do.

Debt collectors are powerless and can safely be ignored. They cannot issue a court claim, or send round bailiffs, or clamp your cat. The only thing they have the power to do is send out poor quality bog-paper.

Coupon-mad

You MUST respond to hook it away from the lease company entirely. Then ignore.

mister_jm

Hi,

Thanks both for you comments.

So we heard back from the lease company today confirming that they did write back to the PPC essentially to inform them that they were not the Hirer and had no day to day contact, essentially transferring liability to my company. 

Another letter was addressed to my company at the same time from the lease company advising them of what had occurred (although there is no record of this having been received).

Also, no record of any correspondence from the PPC to my company - only the eventual Debt collection letter.

Given that the standard APCOA deadline has elapsed, should I still send a letter to APCOA challenging the original PCN?

Coupon-mad

Nope.

Send a complaint (NOT APPEAL) saying your company was nominated as hirer on /DATE/ but no NTH was received by your company.  As such, this is a formal complaint that the named hirer was unable to appeal and instead merely got a stupid debt crawler threatogram.

Use language like that. A robust, verging on rude response is how to get PPC eejits to sit up and listen.