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.

On 19/11/2021 at 19:17, Jamberson said:

 

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.

The default's 6th birthday was 14th March. It was marked satisfied on 6th March. Last month before they did the status change it just appeared as an active defaulted account as it always has, it's present listing is new for this month.

Should it not have disappeared with this update?

I have an ancient Myjar default from 2012 from when they tried to pursue £1055 against £50 borrowed.

It went through a few DCAs who sent standard threat letters which were easily seen off with section 77 requests but no court action was ever taken, and it should have gone SB in March.

I was looking forward to it being gone from my file on today's Noddle update, however instead I've found that 1 week before the default reached 6 years, it was suddenly marked 'satisfied' and it now appears as a satisfied closed account rather than having dropped off my file altogether, where presumably it will sit until 2024.

Obviously it's new status is far less damaging than the active default, but not as good as it having disappeared and when I'm so close to having a clean sheet on my credit file I don't want this thing hanging around on it in any form.

How can they mark it as satisfied when it has never been acknowledged?

I've not heard specifically of the term managed loan,

but I would assume this is an arrangement where they force you to convert your overdraft to a loan in order to get it paid off?

Would this end up being a separate loan account with a CCA attached to it or would it somehow still take place on the current account?

I ask because the amount claimed was far in excess of the overdraft limit,

but the reconned paperwork that was eventually provided supported the number through the application of a large number of fees and debit interest

(which seemed to be higher than fees that were charged when I was running the account).

This of course assumes that the recon statements were real and weren't just constructed by MKDP to reach a number,

I'd had no original paperwork out of HSBC since 2011.

If the former

, then it doesn't look like they did convert it

. If the latter

, then they may well have done.

MKDP's recon paperwork had holes like swiss cheese in it anyway.

I seemed to lose the case largely based on a reconned overdraft agreement which was undated and so couldn't be conclusively attached to any period of time

(and I would suggest couldn't be claimed as a true reconstruction when it was missing something as fundamental as the date it was made),

but crucially was neither the original agreement or the one in force when the account was closed.

The judge heavily grilled the claimant's solicitor over the shortcomings of this paperwork

(and used that as part of the reason why she denied their fees)

but ultimately decided it was all they needed to enforce the claim!

I'll bung a SAR off to HSBC then and see what comes back.

As far as I'm aware it's not a Tomlin.

There was a brief discussion regarding settlement before the hearing but the claimant's solicitor couldn't get hold of them so the hearing proceeded.

Judgement was given for the claimant, but all the costs apart from the court fees were denied.

I asked the judge about agreeing repayment,

she agreed that if an agreement could be reached immediately she was happy to write that into the judgement.

The solicitor and I discussed the arrangement privately outside the court room.

He finally got hold of MKDP, they agreed the repayment plan,

details were left with the usher and the judgement when it came through (as posted in page 2 of this thread) included a repayment arrangement which I've stuck to ever since.

Their solicitor told me judgement wouldn't be entered unless I defaulted on the agreement.

Although every piece of advice I've got contradicts this, it has indeed never shown up on my credit file.

If it was a Tomlin order wouldn't this be agreed prior to the hearing and involve me admitting liability (which I never actually did, I simply lost the case?) or is there some sort of 'back door Tomlin' process which exists?

Thanks for the reply,

I understand the CCJ will only last for 6 years,

but at present it doesn't seem to have been entered or for some other reason doesn't show (for what reasons I don't know) even though I got the judgement 2 years ago.

The claimant's brief seemed very clear that it wouldn't show at the time,

I don't know if there was some reason they asked for judgement not to be entered at the time (although I can't think possibly why they would want to, or what advantage that would give them).

Either way,

at present I'm only 8 months away from repayment,

9 months away from the default disappearing

and by extension because the CCJ doesn't show,

the whole matter being closed and my getting a clean credit record to build up.

But AIUI, if the CCJ now gets put on,

I will then end up with a CCJ visible until 2021

(even if it will spend most of that time showing as satisfied).

Essentially they've threatened to punish me for not accepting their offer.

What I really want to know is whether Robinson Way are able to carry out their little threat and ask the court to 'correct' my credit file in this way

- or are you saying that even if the CCJ gets put on it will only stay there until the account falls off the end in 8 months time?

I wish I left well enough alone and kept quietly paying them now!

Yep HSBC MKDP overdraft. MKDP was the claimant.

About 2 years ago, I defended and lost a court claim. An arrangement was agreed during the hearing, and the other side's costs were denied.

At the time, the claimant's solicitor said that judgement wouldn't be entered due to the arrangement being agreed with the court as long as I stuck to it.

Advice here (and elsewhere) is that this was rubbish, and judgement would be entered.

However, although the default account appears and updates, the CCJ has never appeared on my credit file with any CRA.

The account has been sold twice since then and has now ended up with Robinson Way.

I have always stuck religiously to the repayment arrangement,

paid on time every time without fail.

2 years later,

I'm now about 8 months from completing the arrangement

(and due to the age of the account, only 9 months till the default drops off my file anyway).

My credit rating in that time has improved,

I got approved for a bad credit credit card, used it sensibly and more recently got approved for a much better one from my bank,

I've been approved to rent a flat without needing a guarantor as I did previously and I was looking forward to only being months away to my bad credit history being behind me.

As I have recently come into a small amount of money,

I decided that the sensible thing to would be to use this to pay off this account and bring the matter to a close,

I've just been on the phone to Robinson Way to see what sort of lump sump settlement they would offer.

I got transferred to legals because they have a CCJ for the account who mentioned that after paying it off they would instruct the court to change the judgement as satisfied on by credit record.

I told him about the fact that it doesn't currently show anyway, and wanted to make sure that I didn't do anything to make my position worse.

The settlement offer made was derisory

(less than 5% of the remaining balance, considering I've already paid about 75% of the amount on the judgement at this point anyway)

and I hoped to push them for a better deal.

The conversation ended up degenerating and no reduced settlement was agreed,

and I told them I would just carry on with the existing arrangement.

At the end of the call the legals guy issued a (very) thinly veiled threat after I didn't accept their offer;

he said he would 'make sure the error on [my] credit file is corrected as regards to [my] unsatisfied judgement not showing'.

he's threatened to ruin my credit file,

after it is only months away from being clean.

Is this just standard DCA phone threats or can he actually get my credit file changed?

how many people are involved in this restructure? If a dozen then they have to have a consultation period of at least a month and thus the threats about withdrawing the offer if you question it is merely a shield to prevent the questioning of the legality of their procedures. Read up on redundancy procedures and use that knowledge to assess your own situation as it may be a lot stronger than they make it out to be.

Also, is there a company pension scheme? If so then the pension trustees also have an interest that could be in your favour as it may be that the company will be forced to top up the pensions of those made redundant (but not those accepting the severance) That could well cost the C a damned sight more than any settlement they are willing to offer at present and thus want to avoid redundancy rather than really threaten it.

I don't know - they won't tell me anything about the restructure, only that there is one and my job is at risk. It could only be me. In reality, if I'm right about my suspicions it will affect somewhere between 75-100 people. There is a company pension scheme which I pay into - nothing mentioned about what will happen with that.

You need to remember that this isn't an open negotiation - it's likely to be a without prejudice or S111A ERA negotiation and in either case, you'd never be able to go to court to argue that a contract was formed as any such discussions would be inadmissible.

I'm thinking more though that if I don't leave by mutual consent and end up being made redundant then I have a good constructive dismissal claim as if I am right about how they will restructure the company it appears obvious this would be a sham redundancy consultation about which the outcome has already been decided and with future people effectively already appointed before I've left.

OK, coming at this from another angle then. My email was sent to them on friday afternoon and I have not yet got any reply therefore the offer has not been withdrawn. So presumably if I send an email now stating that I accept the offer then I've accepted it because they haven't withdrawn it?

Last Wednesday, completely out of the blue I was called to a meeting at my HO and told that due to restructuring my job is at risk, the company produced a settlement offer and has given me a week to think about it (unlike 10 days as in ACAS guidelines)

They refuse to announce the nature of the restructuring, just that I don't fit within it and if I decline the offer then I have been told in no uncertain terms that I will be made redundant and end up with less money than they are offering.

Although I don't know (and probably never will) I am almost certain based on noises from the past few months that the restructuring involves paying off half the people that do my job, and then replacing the job of the remaining people with a new one with a bigger remit to cover the loss of those of us that are gone, and they are doing this entirely arbitrarily without any due process or allowing me to reapply for the new job. Given that there are already a small number of people doing this bigger remit job, and they have always said I would be suitable to do this if the opportunity gave up, I believe I am being constructively dismissed, and they are relying on the fact that I won't be able to claim that if I accept the offer.

A few hours after the meeting I sent an email to the people that were in the meeting (my line manager and her line manager) asking firstly for an extension of time to consider the offer, secondly for a fuller explanation as to what is going on and why I won't fit into the restructure, and thirdly asking if they will revise the sum offered. I did stress that I had not made any decisions and nothing in the email was intended to constitute a decision or limit my options.

That evening I got an off the record phone call from my line manager stating that I shouldn't have done that, I should have just taken the money and because I am seen to be arguing with them they might now just withdraw the offer and make me redundant.

Can they do that? I thought if the offer is open then it remains open until the window closes or I accept/decline it. Negotiation and asking for an explanation is surely not declining it? I also don't think they would be that stupid, because if I stay I will get to see what they are doing and retain all my employment rights including the right to take them to a tribunal.

I ask because I have now been offered another (better) job and if they want me gone I'm just happy to take the money at this point!