This topic was closed on 03/07/19. If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there. If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened. - Consumer Action Group

Here are the Licensing details for this company from the SIA website: License number: 0230001191680604 License Holder: GARETH EVANS License Function: Vehicle Immobilisation Capacity: Frontline License Expires: 03/03/2009 License Status: Active License issued: 03/03/2008 Gareth Evans has also held three other licenses which have run their duration.

Quite honestly I doubt they would too, although it would depend on how both parties dealt with the police. They COULD, if they wanted to, but knowing the paperwork that would generate I doubt they would want to unless he became abusive to them, in which case they could quite easily use that as a harsher reason than public order. Doubt the CPS would touch it with the preverbial barge pole though. The MOST likely outcome would be they would tell him to remove the clamp or check more effectively next time, and that would mean bad mojo between the old bill and the clamping firm, which he could do without - which is why I believe he complied, albeit reluctantly.

Personally I would write to them along the lines of the following: * They hold your car, you no longer want it because it's unviable to repair. * You contend you owe them nothing, they contend you owe them a release fee * You therefore agree, without admission or prejudice, that they may keep the car in lieu of any payment they believe they are owed * You state quite firmly that due to your generous offer which you have made in the spirit of compromise you now consider the matter closed and will not respond to any further correspondence. A court looking at this would HAVE to consider that you made suitable efforts to remove the vehicle, and would have to consider that evidence that the garage-appointed tow truck could not get to the vehicle. If you tell the company that you agree they can take the car, then what they do with it then becomes their issue, especially if you were (keep photocopies) to send the vehicle license document section to them that is filled in when sold to a trader and send the other section off right away to DVLA. To be really sneaky, send them their part a few days AFTER you send DVLA their part. A court would have to consider where ownership lay at the time of removal. If you had already given the car to them, and sent the registration documents to DVLA as proof, then they cannot hold you liable for the removal costs for the car as it belongs to them, not you.

I would think that such an event would, legally, be regarded as carjacking. My reasoning for this is: 1) A bailiff or even a court official has NO legal entitlement to require a vehicle on a public highway yield for them. Only a police officer, and under certain circumstances a DVLA road marshal has that legal power. 2) Any attempt to commandeer a vehicle in the way you have described by a person NOT described under (1) above is regarded as seizing the vehicle illegally. A vehicle is an item of personal property, not a residence; right of entry applies to a residence only. What you probably will find is that the bailiff will claim that they have already claimed the car on a previous visit, but the onus will be on them to prove that they correctly notified you of that fact - they can't just steal the vehicle off you in this way on the public highway. Should anything like that happen, make a note of the bailiff's vehicle details, should there be more than one of them, or a description of a bailiff who is on your own. Do NOT resist or fight the bailiff, as this could get you into trouble, but IMMEDIATELY call 999, give the police your vehicle details and the direction the vehicle was last headed in - don't mention bailiffs at this point, just tell them your vehicle has been carjacked (a category 1 response) and let the bailiff enjoy a day in the cells while the police sort the mess out. Remember, that someone who just says "I'm a bailiff" doesn't show any evidence of that, and until you're sure they are a bailiff, collecting on a debt you actually acknowledge exists, if they take your property you have reasonable grounds to suspect a criminal offense (theft at the very least, sometimes theft with the threat of violence and occasionally theft with violence) has occurred.

Reign in the language, asterisked out or not. Treat others how you want to be treated yourself. The first thing you have to do is to get proof from them of what they say the debt is. Give them notice that they are to provide proof that there was actually a debt, which you will study and decide whether or not to challenge. Give them 30 days to comply with that instruction. One of two things will happen. Either they will provide what they say is evidence of a debt, in which case you will have grounds to challenge that if you believe there was never any such outstanding debt, or they will fail to respond, in which case you have grounds to challenge them registering a default against you for a debt they cannot (or have not within a fair amount of time) justify exists. In either case, you then have a definate course of action you can take, either when time is up or when you receive their response. Good luck. Please don't abuse the site helpers, they are only trying to clarify things in their own minds before they post advise, they are not taking sides for or against you and certainly don't deserve sarcastic insults.

I fail to see why. You mentioned two points in your original posting. 1) If you pay a cheque in, the next day it can be drawn on (with certain accounts) - an explanation has been provided for the context of this. 2) You can overdraw by £50 at any time - again, this is only certain accounts, and again it's a "buffer zone" the bank provides, which yes it does charge for because it's only supposed to be a kind of "crisis loan" If you can post a proper reason why this thread's questions have not been satisfactorily answered, or why the answers can't be found in the small print of your account details, by all means post them, but if you just post something like this then that is trolling, and I will close the thread. The forums are for serious discussion, not trolling. If you have other questions, ask them, but we addressed the original question, and showed that it was not a con. To try and keep the thread going with meaningless one liners IS trolling, and can lead to your ability on the forums to be restricted or withdrawn. Please respect other members by posting constructively, and remember, you're a guest here - don't abuse that priviledge, or it may be withdrawn.

Precisely. The bank is absolving itself of the responsibility. If you choose to draw against an uncleared cheque, then it's your risk. If the cheque subsequently bounces, you will incur charges. This is very likely to be in the small print, someplace. It might be a little confusing to keep track of, if you have a lot of cheque activity, but it's not a con.

Firstly, can I ask you NOT to post entirely in capital letters. In internet forums, that's regarded as shouting, and also regarded as somewhat rude. Many times, people who do that are regarded as "trolls", i.e. users who post rubbish just to be seen, or underage teens who don't yet know where the caps lock key is and are too "leet" to find it. Wouldn't want anyone putting you into either category, would we? Okay, to address your comments. Plain and simply, it's a grey area, which would most likely be addressed in the small print regarding your account. Get out a magnifying glass and read up. In Ontario, Canada, when you deposit a cheque the bank (and I'm talking about TD Canada Trust here; other banks might have different policies) allows you to draw up to 40% of it immediately. The rest of the balance is available after two to three days, which is the average cheque clearance time in Canada. Should the cheque "bounce" charges are applied, but at a fairer rate than in the UK. The small print to a TD Canada Trust account calls uncleared cheques "an advance on the promisary note" and states clearly that drawing against an uncleared cheque is a risk the account holder takes, since the bank cannot be responsible for keeping a customers promise, which I think is fair enough. In other words, if you don't trust that the cheque will be honoured, but you draw against it anyway, you accept the inherent risk that if it bounces you will incur charges. So no, I doubt that it is a particular trick by the bank to make money, but your best place to confirm this is to read the small print - all of it - to your particular account and see if that specific item is addressed there. Happy hunting!

Can I just say, with reference to the original posting, which talked about software to copy DVDs, a little point about that. Region 0 DVDs - that is, ones authored by home PCs, have no Content Scrambling System (CSS) and can be copied by virtually anything; Nero Burning Rom is a classic example. Now, professionally authored DVDs, which are region limited, protect their content with CSS to prevent Piracy. Nero will tell you with an onscreen dialogue box "Sorry this is copyright protected - I ain't copying it" that it's found CSS and will terminate at that point. Other, less well written software, may simply report a sense error and stop, or worse crash altogether. This doesn't mean the software is faulty. Copying DVDs is not illegal. Decrypting CSS however IS illegal, and since you would have to decrypt the CSS on a professionally authored DVD in order to be able to copy it, this is where the offense lies when one copies a professionally produced DVD. For this reason, some of the cheaper copying software which doesn't ship with CSS won't understand CSS protected disks, and may crash. Again, not because of a fault, because the CSS is doing what it is intended to do - stopping the copying of intellect-copyrighted material. If the software you bought is purely for copying DVDs you have authored (i.e. it doesn't come with CSS decryption software) and you try to use it on a CD someone else has authored which DOES use CSS, then the software is fit for purpose specifically if it WON'T copy the disk. You can't return it as unfit for this reason. You would most likely have to justify what disk you couldn't copy before you could satisfy the shop that the product was faulty. As a side note it should be observed that an author of a De-CSS program was unsuccessfully prosecuted, but use of his program to circumvent legitimate copyright protection remains a criminal offense, even if combined with a copying program unrelated to it.

The first thing to do is clear your cache. It might be that a "cookie" (a piece of information that should only be temporarily installed on your computer) relating to the login is incorrect. For internet explorer users, go to the TOOLS menu, select INTERNET OPTIONS, and press the two buttons in the middle of the dialogue box that say "delete cookies" and "delete files". If you use Mozilla Firefox, go to the TOOLS menu, select OPTIONS, select PRIVACY and under the private data heading select CLEAR NOW. This should resolve the problem.

Not that I'm aware of, but I could be wrong. Although the time is past and you now stand little chance of getting a refund, you could at the time have threatened to call the police, and to demand that the till be "cashed up" to see if it was £10 over (which would prove you had given £20 and been given correct change for £10) however, doing so wouldn't have endeared you to the police or to the club, and would most likely have earned you a ban from the premises. It's also likely the police wouldn't have given it priority and you'd have waited several hours for an officer to attend. Nothing is to stop you writing to the proprietor and complaining, however, and if you get a rude reply to that, consider sending it and your original (not rude) letter to the local newspaper. You'll probably get some form of satisfaction. Good luck.

Personally I would cc a letter both to your bank and to Tiscali, instructing your bank not to make further payments to Tiscali since they have not fulfilled the original contract. They cannot hold you to a contract they don't deliver on, and if they haven't successfully delivered an upgraded service they have breached their own contract. The key here is to be proactive; address the main copy of the letter to your bank, and the carbon copy to Tiscali. If they protest about it, then you can get heavier by warning them that you had already told them they hadn't provided, and also if they claim the money off your bank (and the bank pays, which some might) you can demand a refund off your bank. From what you're saying, it's a pretty open and shut case. They promised 1Mb, and failed to deliver a consistant 1Mb. They promised 2Mb and failed to deliver at all. They are in breach of a contract to supply a service, so the contract does not hold you to a minimum term. They will probably send you to a debt collector, many companies do even though they know they'll never stand a cat in hell's chance of being granted the money if it goes to court. Stick by your guns, tell them you're cancelling because they can't or haven't provided, tell your bank not to pay and regard the case as closed.

Let's try another definition here: steal • verb (past stole; past part. stolen) 1 take (something) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it. 2 give or take surreptitiously or without permission: I stole a look at my watch. 3 move somewhere quietly or surreptitiously. 4 (in various sports) gain (a point, advantage, etc.) unexpectedly or by exploiting the temporary distraction of an opponent. • noun 1 informal a bargain. 2 chiefly N. Amer. an act of stealing. Now, here we have the problem. The government haven't stolen the vehicle, they are holding it pending the payment of a debt (in this case the fine for being the keeper of an unlicensed vehicle left on a public highway) - there is no intention to keep the vehicle should the payment of the debt and any costs resultant thereof be paid. Therefore, there is no act of theft. The intention NOT to return it must be provable for theft, and the registered keeper has already been informed that the vehicle will be returned upon payment of all outstanding fees. Fair? you could dispute. Theft? No. Theft would be telling the registered keeper that they would keep the vehicle whatever happened. If the registered keeper MAKES THE CHOICE not to pay, that's their choice, under which circumstances the government will keep the vehicle in lieu of the outstanding debt, but that is a choice the registered keeper makes, not the government. You can't accuse someone of theft if they give you a choice and you decide ultimately not to take one option. Theft is denial of access to your property indefinately, with no choices. It could further be argued that you chose to risk parking there despite numerous TV and press advertisements, and also that you did so fully in the knowledge the vehicle was untaxed (evidenced by the expired disk) - DVLA inform people to renew as a courtesy, not a requirement. The disk itself states quite clearly its expiry date, and if you don't renew, you're untaxed and committing an offense. You can't even claim ignorance, since the date is clearly shown on the disk, so claiming not to have received a reminder is irrelevant. The disk itself told you to renew, you didn't, therefore you committed an offense and took the risks associated with committing the offense. On this occasion you lost, and they impounded the car. That's unfortunate, but it's not theft.

Each time you "top up" your prepayment card with credit, the server that issues the credit can store extra information on your card, including the instruction to change the charge per unit. However, the information about current charge per unit can be obtained by cycling through the options using the two buttons on the meter. I think it would be worth while making a note of these values, and if Powergen change them dramatically you can query the reason for the change with them. On occasion I've had a situation where they raise the unit cost to defer a debt on the property, and they don't always notify the current billpayer; this could well be what's happened here. If in doubt, get a new owners card from them which will reset the meter.

There are a number of variations on this, most are no longer doing this because of the large fines that can be imposed, and also most telecommunications operators now require people to opt IN to dial 090xx numbers, not opt out; But just to re-iterate, any number beginning 090 is premium, and any number beginning 00x is international. I've seen a [problem] where the number was 00208 (Egypt) in the hopes people would mistake it for 0208 (London). The onus is on the dialler to make sure they know what they're dialling, and make sure it's a local number for the royal mail sorting office or a recognised parcel delivery company, all of whom can be found in your local phone book. I don't think anything more needs to be said on this.

I can see both sides of the argument here. SJ is making the point that in a courtroom environment (which is, in essence, what an employment tribunal is - a kind of courtroom environment) it's a real dangerous place to be, especially if you are representing someone else. If you can't understand replies here, then you might well be vulnerable to tricks and traps laid by the opposition in such an environment, and therefore would not be representing the best interests of your client. I represented someone to tribuneral on one occasion, so I know what he's talking about. We lost, mainly because my "client" on that occasion hadn't told me everything about the case, and she was caught on CCTV on several occasions doing what she was summarily dismissed for. When the security manager replayed the footage it didn't give us a leg to stand on, but had she told me at the beginning (and had I known the questions to ask her - my field is more computers than law) about the entire situation I'd have advised her differently. I'm aware someone reported SJ's post, but having looked at it and seen the context in which it was written I understand what he's saying - if a little bluntly - and agree with it.

Just to reinforce what Bookworm said, I do agree that standing orders are much better than direct debits which is why the banks discourage merchants from using them. AUDDIS (the automatic direct debit system) is geared to this encouragement, and allows a merchant to set up a direct debit without a signature. This is perfect for the banks because it gives them plausible deniability when it comes to responsibility for paying out on something they shouldn't have. Also, the banks are mainly at fault for the "cascading" problem you're having because of the wording when they bounce something - they tell the merchant to retry the bounced item in normally either 24 or 48 hours, welcoming another attempt they know is likely to fail, just so they can make a further charge. So yes, these are all penalty charges and therefore illegal.

My experience with the AA is that they have changed from being the motorists friend to being a glorified insurance company that insures certain kinds of vehicles against certain kinds of breakdowns. Years ago I had a puncture and found the spare was flat. I called the AA, they came out and fixed it, charged 30% more for the tyre than the most expensive tyre company would charge, pocketed that difference but got me on my way. Last year I had a puncture and they refused to even attend if I didn't have a spare in good condition because it was in the terms and conditions that they didn't supply spare parts. Didn't matter that a garage the AA uses to subcontract was right next to a major Halfords which sold tyres, tyres weren't covered in the membership (read: insurance policy) so they refused to even attend. It's a real shame that the AA has come to this, but I decided there and then not to renew, and would advise people to ask about what their particular vehicle is and isn't covered for before taking out membership with them.

Whether or not LBL works for someone is not the issue here, Hmmm (who I am thinking might be simply trolling this particular thread) - People who are in a desperate situation will take risks because that is often the only option left to them. The BBC posted an article recently saying that with student loan repayments and other debts, under 30 year olds were effectively paying nearly 45% tax. If you've got a family to support, you will take risks. I'm also interested in reading the diary of Sayara Beg, a correspondant writing for the BBC on her experiences with companies that deal with desperate folks (her first entry can be found at BBC NEWS | Business | Reader diary: Dealing with my debt ) who points out that even the best positioned people can run afoul of companies that pursue debts unscrupulously at the expense of the low income customer. She had a good job and even a second house she was planning to rent out until she got pregnant, whereupon she was sacked. She did EVERYTHING by the book, including talking to debt councellors and trying to reach an agreement to those she suddenly discovered she couldn't pay, and what did she run up against? A brick wall. It's therefore irresponsible to just dismiss people's worries with a sneered "You knew what you were getting into so it's all your fault" because often salesmen can pretend to give the answers during a good sales pitch and often prefer to give verbal answers rather than let the customer read the documentation. Of course, when they've gone, it's the signed document that is binding in law, not the answers given by the salesman. If they turned out to be a pack of lies, the document still holds the lawful position. Let's not let this thread degenerate into a slanging match. People have genuine concerns, and though LBL obviously do have satisfied customers, with all due respect this forum is about the times a company does NOT satisfy their customers, so it's those people with bad experiences or with legitimate questions that we'd like to hear from.

Before tempers start to run high, let me just say that whoever is chasing you is immaterial. What they put in the contract is immaterial. The question I tend to ask people is, "If I draft a loan agreement, which states that at the end of the loan period I can come and shoot you dead, can I legally do so?" The answer, of course, is no. You might sign the agreement, but the fact that the clause in it tries to give one company the right to break the law, does not allow such a clause to be legal. That's a very radical outlook, but the principal of law is the same. If a company says "if you do this we WILL apply a penalty charge", that doesn't actually allow them to do so, because doing so breaks the law (in this case the fair terms in consumer contracts act which is european law, not just uk law). This law also doesn't differentiate between banks and anyone else. It says such charges are illegal, full stop. Banks have profited from breaking the law for years, so it's not really surprising other companies have decided to give it ago, but to set your mind at rest, yes if these are penalty charges they ARE covered by the same laws, and they ARE just as illegal as penalty charges applied by banks. I should add here that TWO posts in this thread have been reported, so please let's calm it down; this question has been answered, I'm sure MadamePompodour will post any other questions. Peace, all!

Having a look at the site, I'm wondering what they can do that an individual can't. I've thought for a while that this kind of litigation would be a blank cheque for "no win, no fee" lawyers and can see a lot of companies switching from personal accident claims to bank claims because of the fact that they can't really lose - but when anyone is looking at taking action against their bank, they should always consider whether or not they simply want to get back what is justly owed to them, or whether they want to allow a third party company to exploit the banks dirty deeds for their own gain. I am aware how time can be at a premium for small businesses and sole traders but I still wonder how much it's worth allowing someone else to get a cut of the pie, and whether or not banks will find ways to defend against third parties trying to get money out of them in recovery action.

I read two things from this: 1) You're a fan of Babylon 5 2) You just started action against your bank. If the first, welcome to the club. If the second, good luck and welcome to the club!

As far as I'm aware it should only be ONE re-activation fee, especially if your services were switched off as a result of only ONE service being unpaid for. Dial 150 to report it as a fault (that call is free) and then if they say it's down to the billing department demand they put you through and shout at them at THEIR expense, not at yours.

While I take on board much of what you say, I do have to take issue with a few points. Firstly, manuals. I *DO* do technical support and work as an engineer with computers professionally, and let me tell you as a reviewer I mark down up to 25% of the total score on bad documentation alone, and there is a LOT of it out there. It's no good saying "read the manual" if the manual is written in pigeon-english or doesn't mention important points. Case in point, I went to a call this week at which the people had purchased a wifi extender. They couldn't get it to work, took it back to PC World, got another one and that wouldn't work either. When I got there, I realised that a tiny sentence listed deep in the instructions that read "Make sure the firmware on your router is up to date" was the key to the problem. Updated the firmware, and hey presto suddenly everything worked - but it DID NOT SAY in the manual how to update the firmware in the router, or even where to check which version. RTFM, fair enough - but that doesn't always provide the answers. Support lines: In an attempt to avoid paying me a fee this very customer had called Belkin (the manufacturer) who had as it turned out not only given bad advice on the setup, telling the people to do something which would actually CAUSE more problems than it solved, and then when it didn't work actually telling them to take the equipment back to PC World because "it must be faulty". Yes, they too missed the firmware update, unsurprisingly considering it only merited ONE sentance in a 43 page manual. Support call centres, particularly those located in different continents, are very much hit and miss, and tend to employ people who will take low wages to work from a script, rather than people who know what they're doing. Moral of the story: Sometimes support lines aren't anywhere as good as they should be. While this isn't the retailer's fault, it's worth bearing in mind when dealing with a customer who has been wound up by a hopeless call centre bod that the combination of an unhelpful salesman and a bad support call can test the patience of a saint. Factor this into dealing with irate customers. Costs: Many support lines are premium rate lines, which when combined with bad manuals can cost the customer a fortune. Many will go and ask the retailer to save money, and whether it's fair or not they WILL expect you to know the answers. Again while not exactly the retailers fault, they're available whereas the phone voice isn't. PC World doesn't exactly help this by also operating a premium rate support line. It makes people feel they're being ripped off, especially if they ring and get the script monkey who doesn't have a clue. Software: Sadly, there IS such a thing as faulty software. Windows is a prime example. So is the game X3: The Threat, which had so many bugs on launch it was unbelievable. Some people still don't have fast internet at home, and can't afford the dial up fees to download 60Mb patches, so, they return the software. In an attempt to meet deadlines and make money, more and more software houses are releasing software too early, still with bugs in it. Some of them will manifest during installation, some will manifest at a later point - but to just say "there's no such thing as faulty software" is naive. NO software will work 100% of the time with the millions of possible combinations of motherboard, memory, processor, graphics card etc etc. Expect faulty software to increase as the greedy houses use ever more draconian anti-copy software, some of which will clash with other draconian anti-copy software. Case in point, The Sims 2 will NOT work on most systems that have Nero 5 or above on, because the software believes if you have the high level drivers you obviously intend to pirate the game, but this does NOT manifest itself until the installation is complete. People getting the game home will be able to install it fine - it's only when they come to play it that it'll all go bad. Salesmen: Not all of them are experts. I had several asking one another where they could get another LED bulb for a torch I brought back. Eventually I was told that the LED had gone (nigh on impossible with LEDs) and given some excuse that sounded good but was intended to get rid of me. What was actually wrong with the torch? One of the batteries was in backwards. Deliberately. They didn't spot it. Moral: yes, there are incompetant customers, but there are also incompetant salesmen. When all said and done, if you buy something from a shop, the contract of purchase is between you and the shop. The shop does not have to sell, and the customer does not have to buy. By making the deal, both parties agree to try and make sure at the end of the day the customer has a working product. There will be some customers who are as thick as the two preverbial planks, but that's life. Blame it on the software, the hardware, the manuals or the customer's lack of expertise - but at the end of the day it still falls to the retailer to make it right.