I don't think there is anything in the rules which prevent you as a litigant in person making your own subject access request. I suggest that you respond to them and say that you are litigant in person, clearly you are the injured party in the case and so therefore you are making your request which you would like to be satisfied as soon as they complete their investigation. See what they say and if necessary complaint to the information Commissioner. I think we have had this before and I think it is the police being overcautious but you are entitled to the data you are seeking under information Commissioner and DVLA rules

I'm afraid that quite a few people come to this forum and receive help and then never come back to tell us what has happened let alone hey thank you. Please will you start your own news thread and tell us your story and maybe we can help you through it

In addition to the advice and questions asked by my site team colleague above, where did you get the template from which you used to reply to the letter of claim?

Okay. Very scientific – but I think you have zero chance of getting if you take it to court. I think you will have to show actual loss and the court will think that you are trying to make a money grab. There could be a chance if you play very carefully to get 900 quid instead of the service – but that would be the maximum. If you bring a County Court action then I'm certain that you will win but the entire dispute will have done to a question of how much you are entitled to receive by way of compensation. It's up to you. If you want to sue for £1900 then we will help you. However, you have to pay a claim fee based on the £1900 claim and then hearing fee based on the same amount if you go to trial. If I am right that you are awarded less then any costs you might be awarded will be based on the amount wanted to you – and not the value of your claim. I think you should be a bit more careful and realistic about what you want to claim – but it's up to you.

And how do you arrive at £1900 as the depreciation loss?

Thank you. I don't think that the measure of depreciation is going to be helpful to you. I think you need to establish actual losses – money wasted on failed bookings et cetera. Holiday time taken off work and then not able to be exploited. That kind of thing. You can certainly bring a small claim against them. Have you got in writing from them that the free service is worth £900?

What was your estimate of the depreciation in value? Frankly it is such a vague measure of your loss then I think that it was a mistake for you to suggest that. What is the value of a free service? What did you actually lose by not having it with you at the time? Where do you normally keep it? Do you think it is now fully repaired or are there some outstanding issues? Have you used it or parked it up in the rain?

Yes, I don't think there is any downside to doing this. If they decline then you can say that in your witness statement

Thank you for this and the attached documents. It all looks fine. Don't worry about their confidentiality statement. This is normal practice and they probably don't even understand what it really means. They can't impose a legal duty of confidence upon you in this way and there is no reason in equity why you should be bound by a moral duty of confidence – for instance, you didn't eavesdrop this information only didn't find an obviously confidential document belonging to someone else on the street. I'm a little bit concerned about their claim that they have a contractual term with Packlink which expressly excludes third-party rights. I understand from the Cagger above that this has occurred elsewhere but I haven't seen it and certainly I'm not aware that it has been relied upon in court yet. We shall certainly start advising people who come here to sue in negligence as well as contract by way of alternative

Thank you. Was the value which was declared to the courier the same value as that which you are claiming? The letter of claim is a bit wordy but it does the job. However I would delete any references to mediation or any invitation to them to make proposals for some kind of settled solution. We would normally be advising people to refuse mediation that I believe that there is a new system which is just coming in where mediation becomes compulsory. With the old system, you could choose whether or not have mediation and you would have to agree to keep matters confidential and also agree that you are prepared to compromise. If these are the requirements of the new mediation system then I would suggest that you say that you are not prepared to compromise and that you are not prepared to sign up to a confidentiality agreement. In terms of compromising – the money is yours and there is no reason why should give up a penny. On this action you will be attempting to enforce your third party rights as you do not have a direct contract with EVRi. You should also sue them in negligence as an alternative on the basis that they are due a duty of care and that they failed in their duty and that the loss of the parcel was a reasonably foreseeable consequence which has caused you financial loss. As I think I said earlier, they won't respond to this or at least they won't agree to pay you are any reimbursement. This means that you will deftly have to issue the claim on day 15 which is in another five days. Have you registered with the MoneyClaim online County Court website? You need to do that the start drafting your claim. I suggest that you post your particulars of claim here before you click them off so that we can see and let you know if we think there should be any changes. Finally, you say that you are taking advice from a government website. You should realise that we are volunteers here. We don't get paid but the people who run the government website to get paid. We are very happy to help you. We help everybody completely free of charge but if you are taking advice from some other source then you should stick with them rather than ride two horses at the same time. It will only cause difficulties and conflicting advice and confusion.

I'm trying to unravel this – but I get the impression that there was no contract between you and EVRi and that you didn't even choose them but instead you decided use some third party parcel broker in the USA which organised the delivery. Is this correct? EVRi came into the picture because they were then eventually selected for part of the journey although you had no knowledge that it might be them and I suppose it didn't really matter as long as the item got to you. Secondly, I really don't understand the journey which this item made. You bought the item from somebody in the USA. They then were meant to dispatch it to you to another address in the USA but for some reason or other it came to the UK and then into the hands of EVRi at which point it was lost or stolen. More confusion here because you now tell us that EVRi marked it as being out for delivery but it was never delivered. This suggests that it was going to be delivered to a UK address but earlier on you said that it was going to be delivered to USA address. I think you need to look at the story. Maybe show it to a friend of yours who is not particularly aware of the details and ask them if they can make head or tail of it and then come back to us with clarification so that we fully understand. Also, I think we'd like to know what the item is, how was it declared, what was the value which was declared. You said it was a valuable item because it was rare and collectable. I gather from this that it is non-fungible. We need to understand more about this. Was an insurance policy purchased to cover it during the delivery process. I understand that this rare and collectable item be valued at £200. Do you have evidence this value. This could become very important. Also you have given us no idea when this happened. We need to understand the full timescale. There are a number of possibilities here including the possibility of the contract action against EVRi on the basis of your third party rights or an action for negligence but we need to know far more and we need to get a story that makes sense. Finally, I understand that you have sent the letter of claim. What did it say? How much time did you give them? What did you expect to happen as a result of the letter of claim? Whatever the answers to those questions might be, clearly you had no idea how to proceed after having sent such a letter. A letter of claim is meant to be a serious threat of some legal action if some condition which you have stipulated is not complied with. You set a deadline for compliance and at the end of that deadline you issue the court action. Clearly you are not in a position to do that so your letter of claim is a bluff and undermines your credibility and it will find its way into the EVRi wastepaper basket – if it's not there already.

Please will you make sure that you do lots of reading on the subforum so that you see other people's experience and also understand the principles involved. The chain of dispatch and delivery is unusual in your case and we will need to ask further questions in order to understand all the details. I'm not able to put these questions you right now but please will you stand by for a further response tomorrow and be prepared to give a rather clearer explanation as what you have described is difficult to understand at the moment.

Which of the two companies was it which sent you the email? How did you pay?

The 1982 act And the 1977 act

If we can establish that he is trading then you will be protected under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. If we can't establish that then he would have to be treated as a private seller. I know that on Facebook you have been advised that you have very few rights – but this is not true. Apart from anything else, it's an offence to sell a vehicle which is not in roadworthy condition and it sounds to me as if your vehicle is not in roadworthy condition although we may will have to get an independent inspection. I understand that you had a mechanic give it a pre-MOT cheque. Was that before or after it was purchased? A few problems here – first of all, the van was very cheap. This doesn't reduce your rights anyway but what it does mean is that it may be less worthwhile taking an action that we will have to work that out later. Secondly, you bought the van from a dealer about 130 miles away. This means that if it has to be returned, there is a 130 mile trip to get it there and then you have to come back. Although it's a bit late for you, please follow the link to our used car guide and see what we say about protecting yourself when you buy used cars and in particular what's the little video towards the end of the thread. You won't feel good about it but you may as well learn something for the future and of course other people who visit this thread for that as well. Finally, if we end up having you bring a claim against him in the County Court, I have no doubt but that you will win but enforcement could be tricky. I think the first thing to do is to consult the land registry web search service and find out if he owns the property that is trading from. If he does then at least you have identified an asset and enforcement will be much easier. You can access the land registry website here Summary of freehI think it will cost you about 3 pounds.old - Search for land and property information SEARCH-PROPERTY-INFORMATION.SERVICE.GOV.UK I think it will cost you about £3 or so. Make sure you use the website link I have given you above. It is a government one. There are lots of private websites which look as if they are government and they charge you a lot more money for giving you exactly the same information.