Regarding bayliff charge.
I know I should have paid the parking ticket but it completely slipped my mind with the mrs being preggers an all that!
Bayliff called at mine at early hours, so got up to hand delivered letter, stating If I didn't contact within 24 hours then they may remove my vehicle (work can)...
Fair enough!
Then go outside and my van is clamped, do call the number and speak to bayliff to find my £25 parking ticket has come to a final total of
£370.24.....

I obviously need my van for work and had to pay to get clamp removed, but this was there very first visit and NO charges for recovery vehicle would have applied as they gave me 24 hours to contact them.

This seems very excessive to me?

Nick

Who was the parking ticket originally issued by?

Ross

Two questions:

1. Has there been a CCJ against you in respect of this matter?

2. You say the van is a "work" one - does this mean it is owned by your employer?

Was issued by my local council, it's definitely legitimate!

Don't think there's been a ccj about this although I have had a few letters!
The van is mine, I'm self employed!

Spoke to a helpline an they have informed me that I have been massively over charged and that I will have to go through the complaints procedure..... And there gonna send me a list of the charge guidelines the bayliff has to go by...
Obviously then I will have to calculate what I SHOULD have bee charged and include this in my letter of complaint!
Word I be better off getting a solicitor to put a letter of complaint together and make the relevant calculations?

Nick

OK, the first thing you have to do is get on top of this and understand what has happened so far. This means finding all of the letters and reading them, however painful this may be.

Until you understand what you're being charged for you've got little chance of appealing against the fees.

The bailiffs can (and will) charge you for any letters they've sent you, and for visiting you and for clamping and releasing your vehicle.

Once you understand all of the charges that have been levied then you're probably best talking to the CAB about them. I'd say that the chances are that they are correct and paying a solicitor to draft a letter is going to be (a) expensive and (b) pointless.

I have not had a SINGLE letter from the bayliffs other than the one that was delivered by hand early ours of this morning by hand, at the same time the clamp was placed on the vehicle!

Nick

Assuming that you were no illegally parked outside you house, I can't see what justification there is for clamping your vehicle until you have failed to respond to their ultimately letter. After that all bets would be off. Meanwhile. inteferring with your vehicle sounds illegal (just my layman's opinion)

Nick, AndrewR is giving you some sensible advice.

You are not being asked to look at letters from the bailiffs. Bailiffs are agents. You are asked to root out all the letters relating to this, and you said you had had a load of them.

Without knowing what you have actually been sent, there is nothing else to sensibly suggest. All people can do on this thead is speculate. Relying upon it could costly.

Solicitors are expensive and in this case a likely false economy.

Bailiffs are legalised thief's.

You can attempt the complaints procedure but my friends mother, having caught a bailiff lying repeatedly and proving via CCTV he never visited the house was unable to get him struck off. At the time and to my knowledge no bailiff has ever been properly disciplined or struck off.

As I say, legalised thugs. Once you are dealing with them its trouble.

Which kind of begs the question, to get to this point, you must have done this parking offense months ago?

Hope you get it sorted mate, but if you parked where you shouldn't have, ignored the letters for payment and bailiff's got involved, it looks like you'll not get any money back.

Ross

Your right Ross it shouldn't have got this far....... But there are guidelines for even bayliffs to stick to, I asked him to break it all down for me so I could see what the charged were for, and his reply was "I'm not here to argue about it" then was gonna drive off knowing full well I needed my van for work and he 'd put me in a situation where I had to pay otherwise risk the wrath or even sack from the company I do most my work for!
I could understand the cost if the bayliff had sent numerous letters and payed numerous visits but it's 1 visit & 1 letter!!

Nick

Yes. You will do well to even get them to give you an itemised bill. They will just ignore you.

Knowing full well that it will cost you more to force them to hand over the paperwork.

Didn't mean to come across dick-ish mate.

Ross

No worries! You are genuinely right bud!

Nick_d -

while I just enjoy the appropriate name,

I have heard of people ignoring the "bailiff's" fees and just paying off the original debt. Apparently, it has been know to work.

Oh, and it sounds to me as if you have had a visit from debt collectors - not bailiffs. Councils employ them to recover the debt. Bailiffs are used subsequently (further down the line) to obtain material compensation for the debt if all else fails.

Try paying the council what you originally owed them.

I already payed the 370 though as I needed clamp off the van.......
Nick_d is very apt I suppose!

Nick

Start again - your vehicle was parked legally, and they clamped it as a response to an existing debt?

Is this legal? I thought the debtor had to win a court case against you before collecting or impounding anything of yours. That's when the real bailiffs come in to recover the amount ordered by the court.

Mark_S was correct, I believe, but the additional point is that if it is about an existing debt, I am pretty sure it is not legal to clamp anything until a court case has been won.

This is why it's important to open the letters and find out what's happened so far.

Agents acting as debt collectors have no special significance. All they can do is knock on your door, hope you answer and then ask you for money. There are industry rules about their conduct (for example, they must not be persuing a debt you dispute), but basically they can be treated in exactly the same fashion as you'd treat me if I knocked on your door and asked you for the £500 you owe me.

Bailiffs persuing civil claims are a somewhat more serious matter and they're normally supported by a county court or magistrates' court judgement. They can clamp any vehicle for which the DVLA has you recorded as the registered keeper when it's on the public road, with a clamping order from a magistrates' court they can clamp vehicles owned by you which are parked on private land and they can legally enter your property, providing that they do not have to use force or cause damage to do so. So if, for example, your front door isn't locked they can walk in and start helping themselves to your stuff.

If the bailiffs are persuing monies related to a criminal matter (e.g. non-payment of council tax) they can break into your house and can use reasonable force to gain entry. I believe that in many such cases because they have a legal right of entry they bring along a police officer.

Anyway, having a vehicle parked outside your house is easy money for them. They can clamp it before you're on to them and they know that many people will stump up there and then, as our OP demonstrates.

Andrew - I take it you were trying to write 'pursue'.

But yes, I believe we have some agreement. It seems ridiculous that clamping someone's legally parked car in pursuit of an existing debt should be legal. There would have to be a court order to authorise any such activity. As you observe, we have no idea whether such a beast exists.

So it's the CAB for you, my lad, with all your correspondence, and try not to get Nick_d again! Run along now, you cheeky rascal, before I clip your ear for you and tell your dad!

Hope you get it sorted Nick!

Quick question whilst we are on the subject. I keep getting letters sent to my house for the previous owner (we bought it in Mar 2011).

I know for a fact that some of them are debt letters/unpaid fees/hastening ones. I haven't opened any! but I've held some up to the light and you can read some of them.

I simply put them all back in the post box with 'No longer at this address, return to sender'. The previous owner has never forwarded any mail and although his friend 'popped' round once to see if there was any mail I've never heard from him.

Whats the deal if someone turns up at my door demanding money from me. Can I just prove my ID and they will bugger off?

Cheers
Chris

And after I've bitten my lip to avoid this becoming a spelling-flame thread.

It's all Microsoft's fault - when I'm at home I use Opera to read the forum, and it helpfully spell-checks my posts as I type them. However, for some reason it's thrown a wobbler with this forum and now refuses to load a skin for it, so I don't get to see the lovely salmon-pink screen, just a mess of links.

So I switched to using IE for the forum at home, and then forgot that it doesn't highlight my intellectual deficiencies.

So, it's all Microsoft's fault for not being as good as Opera.

Don't worry. There are plenty of people here who will be glad to help.

Yup, that should be it. The week my wife and I moved into our first flat together a bloke turned up to cut off the gas, following months of unpaid bills.

Showed him some ID and never heard anything more about it.

It's good to be amongst fiends

Sneaky Bast#*!s.

Recievieved a letter yesterday from equita (debt collection agency).... Saying it had gone to court, and I had to pay £94!
And I detailed list of what they can charge me for if I ignore this letter and threat of bailiff!
Get This..... They've back dated the letter to the 5th of may.... I knew I hadn't had any corespondense from them!
But how do I prove they've done this? There is no stamp on the envelope, the only thing there is, is some kind of barcode on the sealed side of the envelop?
Reading through what they can charge, they have definitely over charged me as the sending of 1 letter = £28.... There is a charge also for each visit which is something like £5.50!
So where they've got £370 from i don't know?

Formal letter of complaint to equita first me thinks!

ANGRY!!!!!!

Nick

I'm a bit lost now.

They say they are charging you what? An extra £94? For going to court?

You would expect to hear from the court, then, surely? If you haven't heard from the court you haven't been summoned to court.

Next they'll be charging you for their weekly shop at Asda.

CAB without delay. You should have spoken to them already. You can also phone up the court and ask them whether the alleged visit took place, and what you need to do about it. The court staff are usually very helpful.

Don't try to work this out on your own.

BTW - waking you up in the early hours to hand you a letter constitutes unreasonable behaviour. Make sure you mention it to the CAB.

94 is total..... £82 was the final amount of ticket, and an extra £12 for the court costs!
I may have had a letter saying it was going to court, but the fact of the matter is i should then have received one detailing extra costs I.e court costs from the debt collection agency equita before any further action was taken which I didn't and now they've tried to cover there arse with a back dated letter!

They' ve shot themselves in the foot though by giving me the break down of what they can charge.... Should max, £82 (ticket)+ £12 (court costs) + £28 (visit)
£122 maximimum!!

I'll gonna get on there case tues as I'm away in Newquay for the weekend!

Nick

P.s. is there anyway I can prove they've back dated the letter!?

You could send it off for carbon-dating.

What court costs? You haven't heard from the court, have you? You don't owe court costs if there hasn't been a ruling.

You have left out the cost of applying their wheel clamp, and subsequently releasing it.

Sorry - could you just run through this one more time? Are they claiming that the original demand in total was for £94 ? What was the sequence of events, and the charges demanded, according to them? I am having difficulty putting their story together in sequence.

Original demand was £82 .... This is the maximum a £25 pound ticket can get to according to the help/advise line I called!

There were then £12 court costs detailed in the back dated letter I received yesterday

£94. Is the total also detailed in yesterday's letter.

I was just speculating about the £28! This is all I should be charged extra on top of £94 for one letter!

Nick

OK, I understand that, but I don't understand their complete story in sequence. I think we need that in the first place if we are going to be able to discuss this at all helpfully.

So if they were to go to court and have to recount everything that they'd done to collect the debt, how would their story run?