sbfido Occassionally check my accounts, many suppliers offer discounts to new customers, but not old. AA seem to have been consistently one of these. Really cheap for a year, then fees aren't mentioned too much. Always shop arround, if such practice is common we should all keep flipping. Fact is most of us are just too lazy to check. Four years with the AA, queried my subscription, instantly offered 50% reduction. Thought about it for a minute, checked RAC, so gave them 30 day cancellation notice. So if you are still with the AA.... There again do the RAC do this?

Many thanks Bailiff Advice

Hope you are getting somewhere with your problem. Do check the bailiff's bills carefully, besides the compliance fee, they can charge an issue fee for the writ of control. (£117.75) I have found this fee added at the writ stage to add onto the debt and then added in the billing again. You can ask for a copy of the writ to check if this is so. I'm afraid there is a lot of intimidation within this industry, often out of proportion to the sums involved. On the other hand I had a claim against someone who was fairly bailiff hardened, and there is very little they can do despite all the bluff and bluster as you cannot get blood out of a stone. The golden rule is not to let them in.

Dodgeball, the difference between what is due and overcharging is admitted now by the company. There is no confusion here, in your previous illustration, £280 would have been due, yet a demand for £330 was made, placing the court issue fees in the account twice. They also say they will examine previous accounts, that I am sceptical about. alreadyexists, the problem here is locating previous accounts - somehow honesty and integrity do not seem to be words many would associate with bailiffs. That's why I asked if writs were public documents - so previous accounts could be located.

Not sure what Dodgeball is trying to illustrate here. First two lines OK, the "debt" becomes £150. Add Admin cost £130, OK the total amont to pay becomes £280 What Penham Excel have done is to add court costs again, making it £330 in Dodgeball's example. That is double charging. My problem is that it took a referral to the HCEOA to get an admission out of Penham Excell. Also it only became apparent to me on getting copy of the Writ of Control. This should be a difficult "mistake" to make as we are filling in pro forma boxes here, and only five at that. I could just guess I have been lucky, on the other hand this is just one of five issues raised, all of which question what we might describe as their credibility. If one questions credibility, one can't fail to wonder this is a useful error, as they lose nothing in refunding (it wasn't theirs to take in the first place.) and make on those who don't spot errors. Hence the message check, these charges carefully, if your debt has grown between CCJ and Writ of Control, there should be no further court costs (issue fee). Ideally these firms should be beyond reproach, but how many of us have that experience? BTW does anyone know if Writs of Control are public documents? and if so is access more or less having to peruse the files in the court service.

I have just caught Penham Excel trying to charge double application fees on a writ of control. At £117.75 that is not a bad earner. It seems common with them and really amounts to fraud that can only really be delved into with a police investigation and a forensic analysis of their accounts. We need numbers, anyone similarly ripped off should complain to the HCEOA at HCEOA.org.uk Ideally and independent agent needs to watch this to ensure the aforementioned get on the job they are supposed to.

I have a current thread were the HCEO have now admitted adding the writ fees twice. Once when the obtain the writ of control, which adds £117.75 to the "debt" and again in their billing. Check the amount on the CCJ is the same as the debt if this amount has been added in their billing. Given that more many debtors, the bills seem to grow legs and they just maintain their bills are correct and legal etc, I wonder how often such "mistakes" happen.

As far as I can work out at the moment, Penham Excel are sending all I asked for. As it's coming by snail mail, a cheque in the post, I will have to wait, but I don't think they are arguing the toss. Lets just say that arithmetic does not seem to be one of their strong cards, and book keeping even less so. Given the circumstances they could be paying compensation out on over charging - for example if meeting this extra cost incurred bank charges, or selling goods cheap etc, it's their mistake and it would be churlish of them to argue over the pennies. This was all done on a pro forma, highly likely not to be an isolated case and until now they have been very obtuse to deal with.

As the firm have now admitted "error" on the double charging, I think it safe to reveal that they are Penham Excel. They have furthermore said they are going to look into previous cases, As this can be a tedious process, I could suggest that anyone who has had dealings with them, checks their bills. The "error" occurs when the writ of control is issued, with the issue fee noted on the writ. I doubt if many people actually get a copy of this writ, but what they might find is that their "debt" on their notification and onwards incorporates this fee, even though it is added again in the billing - double charging and admitted. If anyone has raised this issue earlier with them, or this only occurs on larger debts, were shall we say the double charge is less noticeable, then I would suggest that rather than a mere error, this is warrants a police investigation. Don't forget that this "error" inflates the debt and hence adds to futher charges and interest, which also need refunding.

Many thanks alreadyexists, that is more or less my reading of the HCEOA. However, I also gather they are under a lot of pressure to clean up their act. Other profession watch dogs, such as the Law Society, were almost moribund for years, but then govt pressure forced them to rein in some of their members, in fact they almost needed to make examples of some and did. The fact is if the HCEOA doesn't clean up the "profession", then the Lord Chancellor can always look at appointing some other body to do so.

I have had contact from the firm's solicitor, who says he is drafting a response to the HCOEA, the regulating professional body, let's hope there is a will to clean up this "profession". I have used bailiffs myself in the past, not an easy job. I used Marstons, and must admit I was initially fustrated with progress, they seemed by the book and of course one sees bailiffs pulling all sorts of stunts on TV. I had a lady customer, detached house in Kent countryside, not in her name, Range Rover, not in her name and house full of antiques, including ours (she only had to return them for settlement.) You could say she was fairly bailiff hardened, but I was able to supply Marstons some intelligence on her, and they got a result in the end, which is a doubtful if some of the TV antics had been employed. Fustrating as it is for claimants, we have to go by the book. From the other perspective, the word "dishonest" springs to mind to summarise my recent experience, and the temptation to convert a £75 plus VAT notification fee into enforement fees up into four figures is too much for some HCEO firms. This has very little to do with benefiting the claimant, as he may well end up with nothing or having to share repayments with the bailiff. The bailiff's prospective fees, before action, are a significant enducement for the debtor to make arrangements. After they are applied there is little inducement and like my lady in Kent, the debtor can put the shutters up and ride out the storm. Anyway, will keep this thread posted on how this pans out.

This all goes to show how what should be straight forward rules can be more invovlved. I made a complaint to the firm, and promptly got a response which I rejected, so it has now been passed to the HCEOA. My main issue was receiving a letter on June 14th, (though dated June 6th) the notification, with the threat of further action on the 17th. I phoned the firm straight away, pointing out I had already made a payment directly to the claimant and offering to maintain the CCJ amounts. That should have stalled any further action, pending acceptance by the claimant (which he isn't obliged to.) No further communication was received, but the first stage visit (and bill) was made on the 19th. The late arrival of the letter perplexed me, but then they frank their own mail (in other words it may not have entered the postal system until later than the postmark. The firm deny recieving a call from me, however I made a recording of it, now sent to the HCEOA. Naturally when one gets suspicious about two potential acts of dishonesty, one looks deeper. In their response they sent a copy of the writ of control, so the £117.75 was added in there and again on their enforcement notice - definately double entry. The trouble is the bailiffs, to use the old fashioned term, have little incentive to resolve cases at the notice stage, as their pay day starts on enforcement. I detect more than a little arrogance here, as if how dare anyone challenge us. At the moment the onus is on the debtor to prove contact was made and when, not the bailiff. The overpayment wasn't in my original complaint, the firm are now treating that as a complaint (apparently) and are "looking into it". I will be all ears for the response and keep you posted. The debt has been paid, ironically it got to the stage it did because I had been hoping to do that on this particular problem, rather than make an arrangement.

I'm in business, and would be mortified to have over charged a customer, it seriously affects confidence in you. To make such errors on pro forma documents, there is a box for every fee, strongly suggests this is not an innocent mistake. I could manually write out invoices and make the odd mistake, but when everything is in a box like this......Yes I do need to find others, that is why anyone reading this should check their figures carefully for the same mistake. How many people actually get a copy of the writ of control for example.

No, I was only 8 days late making the first payment on the CCJ, but they had nevertheless engaged bailiffs. The interest is listed on their notice of enforcement as £3.16, which also included their compliance fee, £90 with VAT. The fixed costs on issue have definately been entered twice. Given it is on pro forma, this looks to be a systematic error/fraud.

The CCJ was a little short of £7k. On applying for a writ of control, the HCEO added £117.75 for "fixed costs on issue". This took the debt over £7k. On his notice of enforcement, the HCEO started with the debt at over £7k ie including his "fixed costs on issue". He then added "enforcement costs incurred up to the date of this notice" for £117.75, thus adding it twice. Additionally he also added 7.5% of the debt in his first stage fee, effectively adding £8.81 to his bill, to which we then also add VAT, another £25.31. The matter is with the regulating body, who haven't responded yet, they don't seem to be in a hurry to either. I have a feeling this is a systematic error, as how many people chased like this are able to check the details. If an odd debtor has noticed and been refunded, then maintaining a systematic error is fraud.