I'm helping out a friend who got behind with their council tax payments. There is no question of liability to pay, nor of ability to pay either. They simply had some personal problems and at present are not very good at managing their affairs without prompting. When I got involved they'd already previously had a first reminder which was paid up to date, when they called me they'd had a second reminder claiming the full balance for the year. On my advice they phoned the council whilst I was there who calculated what would have been due up to that point had the payments been made on time which was then duly paid. On the call it was explicitly stated that the account was paid up to date, a direct debit could be set up to start normal monthly payments and the threatened summons would now not be issued even though it wasn't the full amount for the year demanded in the letter. They didn't set up the DD and have got behind again but the council has now gone straight to a summons with £95 costs with no other warnings first. Simple question - would the phone call (and the council's inaction for many months after the amount discussed on it was paid) constitute reinstating the right to pay by instalments in which case any further arrears should have been dealt with by warnings rather than going straight to a summons as they have, or is the summons in this case correctly issued?

(Better news than expected) update. Eventually got through to Marstons. The council asked for the case back on 15th November, the same day they offered no contest to the other case with the TPT. Marstons stated I therefore owe them nothing. The call handler agreed to dispatch a case returned letter as confirmation. Hopefully that's it!

Yes I'm prepared to pay them the £75 to get them off my back. I have already accepted the ticket is lost through my own stupidity of missing the date on the TE3 and paid the full balance of it. But as it stands none of their automated systems can even look the account up which they could yesterday. I have emailed them copying them in the payment receipt from the council showing the £113 paid. Hoping to get a reply confirming what is owing. I had a 2nd ticket from this council in the same place. Both revolve around the fact that I had a parking permit under a government-issued scheme which was still issued and valid for use until July 2021 This is documented clearly in the scheme rules but the council seemed to have confused it as being part of a different government permit scheme which moved to digital permits in June 2020 and as such I had no valid permit. However this did not apply to me, I did not qualify for the newer permit and my existing paper one continued to be valid under the scheme rules until the end date. T The other one, where an NTO was received, I had appealed against. The council rejected the appeal (having already rejected the informal appeal). However when I recently escalated it to the TPT the council then chose not to contest the appeal for the reason 'evidence accepted' (I supplied no evidence and merely referred to their own which should have followed). I have never before known a council to offer no contest to an appeal. I mean, they never turn up at the hearing, but they at least usually send the standard evidence bundle off and leave it to the adjudicator. Not this time. No contest, no evidence submitted. They just ran away from it and I won by default. I do wonder if the council have decided to pull back the case from the bailiff and cancel the ticket (although if they'd done that by now I'd expect a refund). Either way will see what Marstons say tomorrow, assuming I can get hold of them.

Development on this...a Marstons Letter turned up yesterday through my mail-forwarding dated 6 November and giving until 26 November to pay £188. Looked up online, balance of £188 showing but I got home too late to call them. Decided since I still had a few days would call them this evening when I got home from work. Call centre allegedly open until 8PM, but got kicked with an 'office closed' message at 7PM. Looked online again, the reference number is now 'invalid or inactive'. Tried their automated payment line, the reference number 'cannot accept automatic payments', did get placed on hold to speak to someone but left on hold for 20 minutes and guess the office actually has gone home and nothing would have happened. No idea what's going on now!

Sorry for the double post. A bit of a development on this. I was going to call Marstons this morning as its my day off and I'd have time to potentially get into an argument over my £113 which I've paid. As of this morning on the council's portal for the PCN the status is now changed to the case is closed and the ticket paid. This presumably means either Marstons have yet to take any enforcement action and therefore there are no fees, or the council took the money for the ticket and didn't pass any part of it onto Marstons for their fees which according to the previous post is what should have happened? Or is it even possible the council claim to have moved tickets to Marstons before they actually do, and Marstons have some sort of data-sharing agreement where if they were called they could have looked the details up and then would claim a letter fee (for a letter miraculously turning up a few days later dated for the day before I called them), but actually they're not even involved yet? Either way, where does this leave Marstons? I can't see how they can execute enforcement action on the Order for Recovery if the council now recognise the order paid and the matter closed. I haven't yet rung them as if I do I'm sure they will say I do owe them money and also owe them the now settled ticked I've already paid for. Just trying to work out what position I'm actually in and whether I should contact them and if so with what argument. At the very least I would imagine I cannot be liable for any further enforcement costs, only those I may have incurred to date?

Bugger, not working out at all how I thought then. Yesterday on both. The council point blank refused to accept payment or discuss beyond giving out Marstons phone number. I moved in late September, but ended up with a huge overlap and still had access to my old address until the beginning of November. As of a week ago, Marstons had sent nothing to either my new or old address. I reckon either it has only been allocated to them within the last week, or (possibly more likely) Marstons will not contact me for some time and will later claim they have sent letters that they didn't send to bump their fees up. So the bailiff's fees are paid before the fine? If I'm going to start paying fees, I wonder if I'm better off just calling Marstons and finding out what they want rather than paying the council what the fee might be. I have a nasty feeling they will proclaim that I will need to pay the £113 again and then both Marstons and the council will deny being responsible for the overpayment.

I had a PCN (issued in error - I had a valid parking permit and the CEO even took a picture of it) which I had the informal challenge rejected on. However an NTO never turned up, the next thing I got was a charge certificate. I did eventually receive a TE3 and should have put in a TE9 to restart the process and get an NTO. However I was in the processing of moving house (under difficult circumstances actually) and it entirely slipped my mind until today when I found it in a box of papers I was sorting at my new place. The TE3 had to be responded to be 30 September and we're way past that now. Fighting the ticket is obviously a ship that's long since sailed and so I was resigned to having to pay the full whack of £113, so I phoned the council to pay. They state the warrant has now been issued and passed to Marstons for collection. I have mail-forwarding to my new address setup, and also still had physical access to my old address until a week ago when I made a final check for any post which may have slipped through. No bailiff letter has been sent in that time, nor any calling card that might not be forwarded. Unless this is a very new assignment, Marstons have done nothing. The council did the usual council thing of refusing to accept payment because a warrant has been issued and a bailiff had been instructed. I argued that as far as I'm aware if they are owed money under a warrant they cannot refuse to be directly paid for it, regardless of who has got involved. Instead I've logged into their online portal and paid them the £113 directly, for which I now have an email receipt. My understanding is this means/should mean the warrant is satisfied, therefore Marstons don't have a warrant to execute, and if they want any beans out of me they would need to issue a claim form in which they claim for their costs in attempting to collect the debt, which to date are none. Would this be correct and what actually happens in the real world?

Yeah the chargeback might be the best option, I just doubt it will work when from the banks perspective it's an old transaction and they only have my word for it that anything is wrong. May have answered my own question, ebay themselves do now list their UK Ltd company at 1 More Place, London as the address for service for UK members. Whilst I anticipated being continually bounced if trying to deal with them, you believe they will ignore a claim form sent to their registered office?

Debit card. I could try raising a chargeback but unsure of success when goods were paid for over 2 months ago. Also believe this is Ebay's problem since they are breaking their own rules and have failed to carry out resolutions that they proposed.

Bit of an issue with eBay. In a nutshell, this is the chain of events: Item ordered in August, delivery address was to my work at a site I am not usually based at. I assumed the item was there, but became aware in late August that it was not. Not received case opened with eBay Seller acknowledged failure to supply and dispatched the item which was delivered early September, evidenced in message from seller when she saw it had been delivered. I was advised it had arrived by my colleague at the site so closed the case Didn't get to check the item over until late September (although within 30 days of delivery). Found item to be poorly packed and had been damaged (Hermes strikes again!) Opened a return case, but was surprised to see it was not covered under the usual eBay Money Back Guarantee when it clearly should have been Seller declined return Spoke to eBay, who after a very lengthy phone call acknowledged that it should have been covered but their system did not log it as such because the seller never uploaded tracking information so the system went on last estimated date of delivery (which had expired long ago due to the initial failure to dispatch the item). eBay agreed to give the seller 3 days 'to facilitate the return' (ebay could not generate a shipping label because it is heavier than the weight limit on their prepaid labels). Advised if seller did not provide sufficient postage ebay would refund Nothing heard from seller. When the 3 days were up, eBay did not refund but instead closed the case. I issued an appeal on the grounds of all the above. The appeal was declined I phoned this morning and had what I thought was a very productive call where the agent apologised and blamed it all on their system making assumptions. Confirmed again the item should have been covered by the money back guarantee. He fully documented the case (did a lot of typing anyway) and transferred me back to appeals, stating also he would actually talk to the agent and explain what had happened before transferring me After going round in circles, nothing has been agreed with the second agent. eBay are back to claiming the money back guarantee doesn't apply now want me to message the seller asking for them to supply return postage refund, and then wait 2 days before 'next steps' are taken. At this point, I've had enough. I do not feel it is for me to chase the seller further - nor does the seller have any reason to accept a return when there isn't even an open case for one at present. Also eBay will not explain what will happen in 2 days until the 2 days are up. Every phone call results in the need to explain the entire situation from start to finish as each agent claims not to know what has been discussed previously. I believe I will just keep going round in circles and have no reason to jump through any more hoops. Since it's a relatively small amount (< £150), I'm happy to throw a claim form at it for the sake of the issue fee as I just want my money back at this point. However it seems a bit confused as to who to send it to or where to send it. eBay (UK) Ltd with a registered address appears on all the emails, some people say to send it there, others say to send it to eBay Europe SARL using the UK address citing the Hague convention. I would have thought the UK company was correct and most likely to succeed. Also unclear whether I should send a LBA or not as I am a private individual and also have made attempts to resolve this informally by speaking to eBay up to this point?

We still have the tenancy agreement, a copy of the notice to quit letter we sent to the landlord and (probably) a copy of the stat dec (although that was sent to the DPS and accepted at the time, it was only the landlord's intervention that prevented the deposit being returned). Email being fired off to DPS now.

Myself and a friend entered into an AST in 2008 with a private landlord where I was the lead tenant. Our deposit was placed with the DPS. Although we had a good relationship with the landlord throughout the tenancy, when we gave notice to quit in 2011 he seemed to take the matter personally and started being very standoffish with us. On our moving out date, the landlord did not attend the property. When we called his phone to find out where he was, it rang with a foreign dial tone and the call was rejected, so he wasn't even in the country and decided to ignore us. We ended up posting the keys back through his letter box and were never properly checked out. Since the landlord had essentially absconded we did a stat dec and sent it off to the DPS to get our deposit back and assumed it would follow. A couple of days before we would have had it, the landlord opposed the stat dec and would not consent to ADR. This left it in limbo and our only remedy was to take court action. We mulled it over at the time and in the end made the stupid decision not to pursue him and put it down to experience. Eventually we got over the matter and I'd not given it any thought for several years. Until today when I moved into a new property which also used DPS and when I checked my account I found two tenancies were shown, and was amazed to find our old deposit from 2008 is still there, now with the status 'suspended pending review'. What is the legal position on this deposit now? Neither us nor the landlord can take civil action against each other as more than 6 years has gone by, but the money is still held with the DPS, and it is our money. Any chance of getting this back after all these years? And if not, what will eventually happen to it?

I believe that a former employer may have acted unfairly against me whilst I worked there and I'm intending to SAR them to see if there is any evidence of this which I can use. I do not know where the evidence may exist or in what form, whether it is in emails, phone calls (which I know to be recorded and stored) or paper records so I would like to make a SAR for every piece of information they have. I also obviously do not want to disclose the reason for my request and find that the evidence I'm looking for may miraculously disappear. I am uncertain whether it's better to make a SAR in the next couple of days (before GDPR comes in), or wait until next week when GDPR is introduced. Under the present system, AIUI I pay the statutory fee of £10 but I then have an unqualified right to request all information. However, under GDPR the statutory fee is abolished but they will be able to charge a 'reasonable fee' where the request is 'manifestly unfounded'. Is there any guidance as to what a reasonable fee might be (lower/higher/the same as the current statutory fee?), and what qualifies as a 'manifestly unfounded' request - is a general request for all data rather than a targeted request considered 'unfounded' in itself?

Seconded. In general though, even if the limitation act did potentially apply, I'm not sure when in practice things would ever take so long but ultimately still result in enforcement that it would even become a question. Even the least competent LA (for which there are many competitors) with the smallest parking department and the longest delays is going to 'press the button' which issues an NTO before the 6 month period for doing so expires. And after that if you don't intervene it's all automatic and things will very quickly escalate to the Order for Recovery stage which in turn will very quickly escalate to the bailiffs. I've only ever had 1 PCN which the LA didn't try to pursue. In that case I got a ticket on my (very obviously crash-damaged and written off) car the day before I scrapped it, and I never heard anything more about it. Likely when they tried to use the registration number to trace the registered keeper and send the NTO all they got was that the vehicle didn't exist and so the ticket went nowhere. That was 10 years ago. And I suspect if I was ever going to hear anything more about it then I would have done a long time ago and so in practice it remains the case that it will never come down to needing to consider the limitation act. What is happening in your case that thinks you might need it?

Thanks, I'll keep an eye on it then.