Debt recovery letter regarding parking ticket

3 months ago, I got a parking ticket in our local shopping centre car park as I was 15 minutes over – fair enough, a pain, but my fault – I paid the £50 fine over the phone.

Today a letter has turned up from some debt recovery firm asking for £144 – I do not have a receipt to say that I paid the fine, but I do have my bank statement which shows the money was taken from my account.

Is this one of those firms that are trying it on?

Yes. Ignore it.

thanks.

is it TCP town and City Parking?

I know it’s too late insomuch as you’ve already paid the £50, but was this ‘fine’ actually a fine?

What I mean is was it issued by the local council & described as a ‘Penalty Charge Notice’, or issued by a private car parking firm as a ‘Parking Charge Notice’ ?

If it’s the former then it has to be paid, if it’s the latter then it should have been ignored completely & not paid. Sorry!

More than £50 fine is excessive IMO let alone £144 (admin charge, debt recovery charge, whatever shite they will add in etc).

A fine of more than £50 is beyond greedy.

I’m going to guess the letter is from Roxburgh debt collecters.

A nasty bunch but harmless.

Regardless of who it is ignore them. NOTHING can happen to you. they have no rights of entry to your house and they have no way of affecting your credit rating.

The ONLY way this can happen is if you are taken to court, and loose, and don’t pay then you’ll get bailiffs and CCJ’s

If they ring make sure you have the company name then tell them “the debt is denied and and any further contact will be considered harassment and will be reported as such” then hang up.. unless you want to have some fun and keep them on hold or something.

For future reference you do NOT have to pay parking charge notices from private parking firms.
I would never suggest you go around dumping your car where you feel. You were paying for a service, however £50 for a 15min overstay is not a reasonable estimate of losses the MOST you owed them was 15 minutes of parking fee.

If it happens again Ignore everything from them (but don’t throw it away)

If you get a council ticket (PENALTY charge notice) you have to pay that or they do get in bailiffs.

Have a look on Pepipoo for reassurance and others experience

If you paid it then it should appear on your bank statement.
I would provide proof of it then case over.
If its a private company then I ignore them.
I have been going over 3 years on these letters.
They stop eventually.
Roxburgh are one of them, the other are Graham White solicitors.
The letters sound very scary but they don’t hold any credence.
Ignore them.

Roxburgh are one of them, the other are Graham White solicitors.

same guy…Michael Soball (sp) He is apparently not far from being struck off.

Thanks for the info folks – it just shows as Car Park Solutions on my bank statement – I didn’t keep the ticket as I threw it away a month after I had paid the fine as I considered the matter dealt with.

It probably was just a ‘parking charge notice’ – I’ll put it down to experience!

Ignore them. Don’t even contact them to say you have already paid it. If you really must, let them waste a bit more of their time first.

A bit late, but you should have ignored the first fine. I would never take the piss but have been genuinely parked where I shouldn’t a couple of times and have ignored all attempts to elicit payment. A bit different if it is a Council charge, but a private PCN isn’t worth the paper it is written on, let alone the jokers that try to enforce them.

I’ve been ignoring one of these for the last couple of months. The sequence of threats has suddenly entered the realms of comedy:

Letter 1 – “Pay us £144”

Letter 2 – “Pay us £245 or we will instruct a solicitor”

Letter 3 – “We are going to instruct a solicitor”

Letter 4 – “Notice of intention to litigate”

Letter 5 (yesterday) – “We might still litigate so why not just pay us £112 and be done with it?”

Write to the management of your local shopping centre, give brief details and tell them you’re unwilling to park there again. They might not know it’s going on.

I don’t even open the letters, return to sender. In fact I do this for all junk mail as well, write on the envelope ‘Refused’ and stick it back in the postbox, they soon get the message.
If they keep sending then I put in an envelope and send it back to them without a stamp on it!!