help with BW Legal - letter of claim

[choppes73]

happy new year everyone! I am new here so firstly hello we have been battling Brittania Parking PCN for a while now (since march 2018) and following all the advice on the forums with Martin Lewis etc the advice was to ignore them. so we did. it has now wound up going all the way to BW legal and we have received a scary letter stating they are taking us to court. they haven't got the correct spelling of our surname on the letter so you could be forgiven for thinking it was just junk mail. however we have opened later letters and realized they are now court threats. I have continued to read forums relating to this company and generally the subject of PCNs as opposed to Penalty Notices from councils and they do all encourage you to ignore them and eventually they leave you alone. however as they are now using terminology such as CCJs it feels like a costly mistake to ignore this. has anyone got any advice - do we just pay up now and have done or is there a chance anyone has ever managed to get BW legal to back off. any help would be appreciated thank you

[pt2537]

happy new year everyone! I am new here so firstly hello we have been battling Brittania Parking PCN for a while now (since march 2018) and following all the advice on the forums with Martin Lewis etc the advice was to ignore them. so we did. it has now wound up going all the way to BW legal and we have received a scary letter stating they are taking us to court. they haven't got the correct spelling of our surname on the letter so you could be forgiven for thinking it was just junk mail. however we have opened later letters and realized they are now court threats. I have continued to read forums relating to this company and generally the subject of PCNs as opposed to Penalty Notices from councils and they do all encourage you to ignore them and eventually they leave you alone. however as they are now using terminology such as CCJs it feels like a costly mistake to ignore this. has anyone got any advice - do we just pay up now and have done or is there a chance anyone has ever managed to get BW legal to back off. any help would be appreciated thank you

Hi there

Its very tricky to offer any advice when we dont have any details about the case, can you perhaps enlighten us as to what happened? a little background info would help

[choppes73]

thanks for responding ok sure - so in March my husband parked in a little shoppers car park at the back of the high street - around 7pm in the evening. he got back to his car about 9.30pm. a few weeks later we received a PCN in the post from Brittania parking eye stating he had stayed longer than permitted in the car park. the letter was addressed to a name similar to his but misspelled. it did correctly identify him as the driver though but due to the misspelled name and the fact it was a £100 fine we immediately researched it and found lots of noise about PCNs on the forums telling us it couldn't be legally enforced. we did go back to the car park at one point to see what the notices said and having now read the rather small print it does say up to two hours free and after that there may be a fine, however at the time it was dark and the signage wasn't immediately obvious to him.
the letters continued after some time and now they have reached the letter of claim stage saying balance due will be £241.16. I am wondering if there is a way we can reason with them and agree to pay the original £100 perhaps just to shut them up and make the letters stop. the letters are still addressed to the incorrectly spelled surname. thank you again for your help

[choppes73]

I should add this was Portswood shopping centre in Southampton

[KINGER1]

Choppess73 I would be very interested in what you do as we to have letters from Be legal. In need of help

[choppes73]

scary stuff eh? I have read so many worrying things about them on the internet its hard to know what is safe to challenge and whether to just pay up to get rid.

[ostell]

Go through all your posts and edit them to remove any possible inference about the identity of the driver. Use "the driver ......" etc. Have you actually written to them and possibly identified the driver? A simple yes or no please.

As you've found out these should not be ignored, at least not since 2012.

The driver cannot have been identified, they have got the keeper details from the DVLA.

You state that you received a notice a few weeks later? How many is a few. Without a windscreen ticket then they have to deliver the parking notice to the keeper within 14 days in order to make the keeper liable rather than the driver. Whats the dates on the PCN? date of incident, date of issue, date of posting and when was it actually received.

Post up the PCN with identifying details removed but leave dates.

Is the name on the V5 document incorrectly spelt?

What stage are you actually at? Have you received a claim form from Northampton or are you still at the Letter before Claim stage?

The maximum they can claim from the keeper would be about £175

They have pushed it to court as you haven't responded and they are hoping to get a default judgement if you continue to not respond

KINGER1 please start you own thread if you want help and don't identify the driver.

[KINGER1]

Thank you for your help I have started my own thread earlier today

[KINGER1]

Really scary stuff just wondering if I should pay and forget about it

[ostell]

Really scary stuff just wondering if I should pay and forget about it

Why?

Just answer the questions and you may be able to tell them where to go

[KINGER1]

Ostell sorry I have started a thread earlier today. Just waiting for advice very anxious

[KINGER1]

Ostell thanks I have answered all the questions under my thread ncp parking fine help. Hope that's ok