Parking Charge Notice (Speculative invoice #1) from Excel

[deswa77]

Threatening letter #1 received on the 19/01/12 demanding £60 rising to £100 if not paid in 14 days.

The letter titled Parking Charge Notice was sent by Excel for parking in an Iceland car park for 23 minutes. (I managed to spend over £100 in the store in this short period).

 

After reading the very useful information on this site I will be ignoring any correspondence from Excel or DCA and updating this thread accordingly.

 

I've noticed other posts mention contacting, local councils, MP's, ICO, DVLC and land owners as a valid course of action. I'm keen to do likewise and think my first action should be to advise Iceland's CEO of the loss of my £3k annual spend. Any suggestions or pointers to templates would be appreciated?

Edited February 13, 2012 by deswa77

[deswa77]

Speculative Invoice #2 received from Excel Parking today, it was issued 21 days after the Parking Charge Notice. As expected this intimidating letter titled ‘Notice to Owner’ states intent to issue court proceedings. The unjustified charge has now risen to £100 with the threat of an additional £30 court fees and £50 solicitors scale costs + 8% interest. Both letters now appropriately filed under junk in the vain hope that Excel may act on their claimed intent, I would be so lucky J

I won’t be contacting Excel but plan to write to Iceland’s CEO and his PR advisor pointing out the flaw in their business model which is allowing legitimate customers to be intimidated by business partners.

Iceland owned by Baugur

Malcolm Walker, Chief Executive

malcolm.walker@iceland.co.uk

01244 842221 / 07836 552200

Keith Hann, PR adviser

kh@keithhann.com

01244 842228 / 07831 521870

I would appreciate any guidance on content of this letter and also if I have identified the correct contacts?

[ManxRed]

Not sure on the contacts (there is a site called CEO contacts, if you Google). Why not wait for some more letters first? You may get some even worse ones from Debt Collectors or even a pretend Solicitor? The flaw you are pointing out to them is that the letters are baseless in law. Point out that under civil law they cannot fine anyone, nor can they pursue anyone other than the driver, however they have harassed the Registered Keeper. Also, under civil law, the redress for breach of contract is limited to a genuine pre-estimate of actual losses only. In a free supermarket car park, their losses are zero, but they are harassing the RK for £60. And how come their actual losses appear to rise from £60 to £100? They can only be one or the other, not both. They are clearly a contractual penalty which is unenforceable under civil contract law. There's probably loads of other stuff under Consumer Laws as well, wait for others to chip in.

[deswa77]

Thanks manx, good points. I will wait for at least 1 DCA letter before contacting Iceland.

[deswa77]

Speculative invoice #3 received from Excel today, titled 'Final Demand Notice'. There are several errors and contradictions in this notice and I think my 12 year old son could write a better extortion letter. The wording is now more intimidating/direct with words like 'intent' and 'may' removed e.g. "Final demand prior to court action", "Failure to pay this notice will result in court proceedings being taken" Unless Excel has changed it's processes their next action should be to send the toothless DCA and solicitor letters so it will be interesting to see if the next letter actualy relates court action, I hope so!

 

I still plan to contact Icelands CEO highlighting Excels unjustified intimidation of it's customers but I'm waiting for the threatening DCA and solicitor letters first. Maybe I should include my estimations of revenue/costs associated with this issue;

 

Iceland -£480 (revenue)

Excel -£5.50 (DLVA costs and a conservative £1 per letter cost)

Me £0 (Actually i've saved £9 on petrol this week as Morrisons gave me a 15p off per litre voucher)

Edited March 2, 2012 by deswa77

[instrumentsofjoy]

I think you are adding a great job.

 

When you write to the CEO (and I agree with the others wait until you have the full letter chain) point out to him all the times Excel have lost in court.

 

Easily found if searched. I use http://usestealth.com/ now. I recommend it.

 

The reason I suggest this is he might just get rid of them when he sees how useless they are especially when challenged.

[Scooby Doo69]

A better course of action is to contact your Local MP. ACS Law operating a similar model making over a Million pounds in the process before people power put a stop to it and landed the Solicitor in front of a disciplinary panel and getting Him struck off. The CEO of Iceland won't care about this, but your local MP will. The bigger picture is to make this whole process illlegal.

[deswa77]

No further communication from Excel, it's been four weeks since I received speculative invoice #3.

Instrumentsofjoy, thanks for the feedback and usestealth link.

Scooby, I will contact my MP and the CEO but I need Excel to send more threats. I accept your point that Iceland’s CEO won't care about the loss of my £3k per annum spend. However, IF every customer threatened by Excel took their business elsewhere the CEO would care about the revenue loss.

(Was it really 'people power' that got Mr Crossley struck off for 2 years? I thought it was far more complicated than that

Updated estimations of revenue/costs;

Iceland -£720 (revenue)

Excel -£5.50 (DLVA costs and a conservative £1 per letter cost)

Me £0

[deswa77]

Still no further communication from Excel so it looks the 'ignore all' advise in this forum has saved me £60. Thanks all!