ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by AIR FILTER

Anyone else know about this firm that try it on with the weekly shopper ?

No.1 son got a demanding letter from this lot last week and asked my opinion, knowing that I've had a few rows about parking. They can't fine you, the £80 demanded is a penalty (and not allowed under civil contract law), the letter is an invoice from a private firm posturing as some authority and they could only get any money by issuing a County Court summons, which would cost them far, far more than they will ever get back. Generally, they just send threatening letters and give up before the court stage.

The short answer , and my advice, was that they're con artists preying on the gullible and that he should ignore them. I did have a browse on the internet (Pepipoo, MSE, etc) and there were two interesting comments. One was a comment made by a shop assistant at a retail park to the poster; she said she'd had 14 such demands and had ignored them all. The other was someone who had been dragged through the County Court by them after receiving two demands. Their demands were ruled to be an unenforceable penalty by the Registrar/Court judge type person and the defendant owed them the cost of two parking tickets (i.e., pay & display tickets) and the £2.50 cost of getting his details from the DVLA. Since he hadn't paid that, he also incurred the costs of their summons, about £95, but not their legal costs. Their legal costs were in excess of £2,000. The result is that they usually don't bother with the County Court bit, see above.

We'll be ignoring them, I'll report back if anything significant happens (other than more impressive looking threatening letters).

LIDL have many such car parks, that are essentially free, even if you go over the 90 minutes allowed. They are so convenient and near real shops too.

I must have had 30 or 40 of these 'speculative' invoices, and I've never paid any of them.

Of course the truly obnoxious thing is where these companies bill shop staff for parking. There is a car park in Valley Park, and on that retail park there are several other stores, one being a boots the Chemist. The pharmacist told me he parked his car there overnight as he was doing a night emergency service shift there and got a bill for £70. He told them he wasn't going to pay it as he was staff working nights. They pursued it through Boots HR and they took it out of his pay.

His union, USDAW are taking up the case.

Is clamping cars on private land illegal in England yet?

Originally Posted by vvaannmmaann

Is clamping cars on private land illegal in England yet?

It becomes illegal on the 1st of October.

You will see speculative invoicing of cars go through the roof.

I like the clever little chequered edging border that goes all the way around on their bullshit invoices to give the impression that they are the Law.

BBC - Watchdog: Should you, by and large, pay your parking charge?

Originally Posted by A Worker

It becomes illegal on the 1st of October.

You will see speculative invoicing of cars go through the roof.

Didn't know about this one. Been warned off a couple of times while waiting in a wagon on some industrial estates with parking restrictions. Thankfully they have given me benefit of the doubt first and given me time to bugger off before clamping but it does happen. So as from Oct 1 no more and it's back to parking where the fuck i want then?

Originally Posted by ark-angel

Didn't know about this one. Been warned off a couple of times while waiting in a wagon on some industrial estates with parking restrictions. Thankfully they have given me benefit of the doubt first and given me time to bugger off before clamping but it does happen. So as from Oct 1 no more and it's back to parking where the fuck i want then?

Private wheel clamping to be banned : Directgov - Newsroom