Defence Letter (G24 / DCB Legal): help needed with paragraphs relating to the facts of my case

karaoz

Hi all,

I received a Claim Form and I submitted Acknowledgment of Service on 22/04/2025. Now I need to write my Defence. Looking through the sticky Announcement for NEWBIES, I know I need to use the template letter but also need to add a couple of paragraphs directly relating to the fact of my case. This is what I am struggling with. Any help is highly appreciated. Below is a brief description of the events so far (what I can remember) together with relevant images.

1. The date of contravention: 18/01/2020 - "Failed to pay your parking tariff". The reason for not paying was that after entering registration number into a pay machine, the message on the machine was that the parking fee has already been paid for. Tried the same several times but the same message was displayed, not providing us with any other option to pay.
2. Received PCN, dated 23/01/2020, showing images of car arriving and car leaving the parking space, and asking for £100 parking charge (or £60 if I pay within 14 days)
3. I reacted to this through G24's web-based messaging service, stating what happened and offering to pay for the non-paid parking fee (£1)
4. Received an email on 05/02/2020 from noreply@g24.co.uk rejecting my appeal stating "This is a pay to park car park. No attempt to pay has been made under this vehicle registration." - This is of course not true since I attempted to pay at least twice but I have no photographic evidence of the message displayed on the pay machine.
5. I appealed through the IAS on 06/02/2020 as shown on the image below:
6. Their response on my appeal was this:
7. And my response to their response was this:
8. And this was Adjudicator's Decision:
9. After this I received many letters, notices, reminders, which I ignored. Then it all stopped for a couple of years and then the letters from DCBL started arriving. The first one "Notice of Debt Recovery" (Charge £170) dated 26/11/2024. The next one was "Final Reminder" dated 16/12/2025. The next one was "Final Notice of Debt Recovery" dated 18/01/2025. And then finally "Letter of Claim" from DCB Legal giving me the last chance to pay within 30 days of the date of the letter - I ignored all of these
10. Claim form arrived, dated 16/04/2025
11. I submitted the Acknowledgment of Service on 22/04/2025 
12. Now I need to write my Defence and I am not sure how to proceed with two things: 1) How to write the part of the Defence that relates to my case. 2) Do I need to modify any other parts of the Template Letter for Defence? (completely lost in the language used there).

Thank you so much for any suggestion you may have. 

Coupon-mad

Same advice as here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81432125/#Comment_81432125

Spare our time and yours. Don't overthink it. We don't need to discuss paragraph 3 on individual thread after thread. No case is different. Just copy from others and add what you told us: the facts. And that you appealed but now realise that the IAS was a farce: a kangaroo court all along.

See you at WS stage!


P.S. I'm sad that you didn't take a photo of the screen on the day.

The minute your car was picked up leaving you were getting a PCN. Guaranteed. Nailed on certain. You can't just leave scam car parks where a machine has failed, driving past their ANPR camera hoping nothing will happen.

A relative of mine did the same as you (just naively left after an hour's stay somewhere, thinking nothing would happen as the machine was broken/faulty)  in fairly similar circs.  I was actually annoyed at them being so silly: my jaw dropped to the floor to learn that it never even occurred to them to evidence the scam before the inevitable VRM capture on leaving generated a PCN. I got them off it but that was by using POPLA.

You have to protect yourself. Best way to do it is not use private car parks at all. But if you have no choice, always read signs and if any of their rubbishy deliberate trap systems fail, get evidence on the spot.

KeithP

With a Claim Issue Date of 16th April, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service('AOS') in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Monday 19th May 2025 to file a Defence.

That's two weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence but please don't leave it to the last minute.

To create a Defence, and then file a Defence by email, look at the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Don't miss the deadline for filing a Defence.

Do not try and file a Defence via the MoneyClaimOnline website. Once an AOS has been filed, the MCOL website should be treated as 'read only'.