A Brighton Boy Blogs

For anyone fighting an unfair, unjustified or illegal PCN from Brighton & Hove City Council’s illustrious parking department, you may be interested to know that my appeal with the Parking Tribunal (now properly named the Traffic Penalty Tribunal) won by default because the Council didn’t even bother to present any evidence to the Tribunal.

Mine was a case of being accused of parking in a loading bay at 06:30 in the morning whilst not loading, whereas in fact I was loading – see also the original posts Testing the Parking Tribunal and Brighton & Hove Parking – criminal racket in disguise

So… you park in a car park where there are no clear signs of how you should pay or how much you should pay, or indeed to whom you should pay it. Then you get a threatening letter some time later charging a fine for “illegal” parking. Then the debt collector’s letters start, then the solicitor’s letters, and ultimately the threatening, intimidating phone calls. I bet the majority of you will just pay up. And I’m not being sexist here, but most of the people who pay up will be female – they’re just so easy for these telephone debt collectors to intimidate. That’s the reason this racket continues to grow into a multi-million pound business.

I had just such a run-in with Meteor Parking at Brighton Station car park. Visit the car park and you’ll see entry and exit barrier machines all wrapped up in plastic with their barriers removed, as if they’re now disused, which in fact they are. You’ll see cameras dotted about. But until recently you wouldn’t have seen clear signage that says whose car park this is, how much it costs and displaying clear terms and conditions, and it’s debateable whether they’re clear even now. Even if you did see such things, merely parking in the car park would not represent a clear breach of contract – because under UK law you cannot unwittingly enter into any contract, or be tricked into entering into one.

So when you get the “fine”, be very clear in your mind. Though it’s made to look threatening, and as similar as possible to something from the Police or government, that’s just the first part of the process of intimidation. It’s not a fine. A fine can only be levied by an organisation authorised by statute, that is when a law has been passed or a license granted by government to collect such a fine. Meteor Parking is not. Nor are a whole host of other parking companies (Park Direct Ltd, TCP, UK Parking Control, Euro Car Parks etc) which have sprung up over the past 20 years. All they can do is issue you with an invoice, and even then it’s fraudulent if there’s not a clear contract that you’ve entered into with your full knowledge.

So let’s turn to the debt collectors – Roxburghe – well, apart from sending a threatening letter or two, they were pretty ineffectual. The worrying one is “Graham White Solicitors”. Check their records. They have one solicitor listed – one Michael David Sobell, who was admitted as a solicitor in 1962 – http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/choosingandusing/findasolicitor/view=solicitordetails.law?id=183218&orgid=272121&searchType=L. But you’ll never hear from him… instead you get letters threatening you, intimidating you, and even adding extra charges from nowhere for “administration” or “costs”. Then you get calls – several per week – what sounds like and is clearly a busy call centre, staffed by rather cocky, pushy chaps claiming to represent Graham White Solicitors who will desperately try to justify their attempts to get you to pay up with a credit card over the phone. These are not solicitors – nor paralegals – nor legal secretaries. These are just call centre debt collectors. They quote laws that don’t exist. They claim powers for authorities who either don’t exist or who have no such powers (like the British Parking Association who, it was claimed, have the power to license or shut down ANY car park in the UK – which they don’t – they’re just a professional association). They say you’ve parked “illegally”, which suggests that you’re in breach of some sort of parking control legislation – but at the most it’s a minor breach of an implicit, assumed contract. They will threaten your credit rating. They will threaten civil litigation, small claims court, county court judgements (CCJs) – anything they can use to worry you into paying. One complete idiot even mentioned getting points on my driving license if I didn’t pay up! Eventually they’ll even start offering you discounts if you pay right now. They really don’t like it when you actually know more than they do – which generally isn’t hard, if you’ve done your research. Several times they’ve lost their temper and put the phone down on me.

Feeling alone? Don’t. Look here…  http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=2329119&page=1 - and see that there are lots of people in the same position. Let’s use some logic for a moment – through all this I have been in contact with a whole host of people employed solely to collect money on a rather dodgy principle of law. If this wasn’t a huge money-making enterprise, how on earth could they afford all this? Go-Ahead sold Meteor Parking to Vinci Park Services in September 2010 for a whopping £11M. Then there’s Graham White Solicitors – all those employees, all that effort. And so much desperation in their tactics. So please don’t be intimidated into paying if you don’t think you should.

Oh, and… this is to the Law Society, the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Legal Ombudsman. If you’re fed up with your noble profession being viewed in a negative light; if you’d like to be seen by the public as an honourable, trustworthy profession… well, you know what to do. Regulate your solicitors. Put your house in order.

N.B. The firm Graham White Solicitors mentioned in this article is Graham White Solicitors of Manor House, Lavender Park Road, West Byfleet, KT14 6ND, tel 01932 332 020, fax 01932 352 617 specialising in Civil Litigation, Commercial Property, Landlord and Tenant and is wholly unrelated to Graham White & Co of Bushey, Herts.

Update, February 2012: For more than six months I’ve heard nothing more from Roxburghe or Graham White Solicitors, or indeed Meteor Parking. Today I sent the following email to The Law Society, because I know if I was leading a professional body like the Law Society, I’d be pretty damned annoyed about someone taking the good name of the profession in vain like the so-called “Graham White Solicitors”.

Brighton Parking Restriction Notice

Today is Sunday. The parking restrictions on my road are clearly displayed as Mon-Fri noon-1pm. There are very faded, patchy single & double yellow lines which haven’t been repainted for years, and a few months ago there were Council notices tied to lamp posts about lifting parking restrictions to allow more parking locally. So what was a traffic warden doing walking up & down issuing parking tickets? The Council is probably hoping that people are idiots who get scared into paying up even when they don’t have to. Hopefully they’re wrong.

A parking ticket (PCN) illegally issued by Brighton & Hove City Council

So, Brighton & Hove City Council – please tell us – what will it take to stop you and your imbeciles from wasting everyone’s time and money with these continued attempts to extort money from people fraudulently?

After I reported my parking ticket woes in my post entitled Brighton & Hove Parking – A Criminal Racket in Disguise, I appealed the PCN and got a rejection notice from the Council. No surprise there – after all they have to earn their money from somewhere, even if it’s from fraud.

Well, my fellow business breakfast club members were up in arms at the claims by Brighton & Hove City Council that I had parked my vehicle in a loading bay early one morning without any loading being observed. “But that was the morning of your presentation” one said, “I saw you unloading all your kit”. Others agreed and were outraged at Brighton & Hove City Council’s blatant attempt at criminal fraud.

So, one by one they submitted signed witness statements for me to forward to the Parking Tribunal. Unfortunately the rejection notice had arrived whilst I was away, which didn’t help, particularly as they give you a measly 28 days to bring the case to the notice of the Parking Tribunal. Not a lot when you have to gather evidence from disparate sources. But why should I be surprised when the vested interests of the multi-million pound parking racket are at stake, that everything should be stacked in their favour and run to their schedule?

So, now I await the outcome of the Tribunal and I’ll let you know when it arrives.

Some time later: Well, I have to report that Brighton and Hove City Council didn’t even bother trying to defend my appeal, and so the Parking Tribunal found in my favour by default. This indicates that the council knew all along that it didn’t have a leg to stand on & was just hanging on in the vain hope that I would shut up, give up and pay up.

As an old ex vegetarian I’m still probably more of an omnivore than any of my friends, and as open to good vegetarian fayre as any other cuisine. Terre a Terre, with its mad menus and gourmet dishes of diverse ingredients lovingly assembled with perfect balances of flavours and textures, is a favourite purveyor. Food for Friends was always reliable if unexciting, producing seventies style veggie bakes and brown rice in a typically home style manner, honest good food. The market changed, the likes of Terre a Terre appeared, and Food for Friends had to change too.

So, cut to the present day. The founder and original owner Simon Hope sold the business in 2004. Everything is about four times the price of the old Food for Friends, and the menu is distinctly more refined and poised, promising much… And sadly failing to deliver.

Our visit was marred by slow, fairly dismissive service from the start, almost as though we were an inconvenience. The food was unexciting, over-ambitious for the abilities of those preparing it, and lacking flavour. Flavours that sounded delicate and refined on the menu were in reality loud, brutish and unbalanced, such as my starter which tasted of nothing other than garlic. Towards the end the staff were eager to hurry us out to make way for the next sitting, despite the delays having been of their making. The final sting was the bill – for six adults and four children the total amounted to just shy of £250. If this had been good food, lovingly and skilfully prepared, and served with a smile by polite, courteous staff, then we wouldn’t have minded. Unfortunately the worst taste of the evening was the one left in the mouth by this monumentally failing, overblown, arrogant restaurant. Bring back the honest, well-cooked food.

Every new technology attracts scammers and fraudsters – it’s been happening since the dawn of time. The internet is no different of course. Not a week (or indeed a day, usually) goes by without someone calling me claining they’re in some way related to Google or Facebook, calling on behalf of Google or Facebook, or actually directly representing Google’s “front page allocation team”. I kid ye not. They’re not, of course – absolutely nothing to do with Google or Facebook, and sometimes little to do with Internet marketing at all. Most of these people have a Manchester number or a Mancunian accent. Indeed a Manchester scam outfit has been under investigation by the Police. So now, I usually just avoid answering Manchester numbers (0161). Sorry Manchester.

Today I got a call from 07584….96 – yes, a mobile number. The woman “Nina” claimed to represent a business classifieds web site and their companion shopping portal web site. She claimed that by signing up with them, which would cost £200 to set up, and a further £50 per month to maintain, they would ensure over 1,000 incoming links to my web site. She also claimed that the company’s staff comprises ex-BT top sales people. Digging further, and asking her some pertinent questions, it was clear that she didn’t know her way around their own site very well at all. But she was very eager to sign me up and get hold of my credit card details. Finally, I asked where these incoming links were, and so she put me onto her boss, who… surprise surprise… had a Mancunian accent.

The man did everything he could to avoid answering my question about where these links to their customers’ web sites could be found. Eventually I managed to get him to tell me the name of one of their customers who had signed up with them. So… if this was indeed a customer of this outfit, there should be some incoming links to their site from either the shopping portal site or the business classifieds site. You can find out from Google by using a simple query language extension link:domainname.com – and sure enough there were no links, from anyone, let alone these two sites pushed by the Mancunians. Nor were there any links to their alternative domain name. Then I did the same for one of my sites and got a page full of incoming links. The chap on the phone did the same, he verified and verbally acknowledged these results and said he’d have to talk to his technical people about this. I suggested talking to Trading Standards as well.

After getting off the phone I called the number back and a chap with a Mancunian accent answered. I also called their “customer” and asked if they have a business relationship with this company. Yes, they do. Are they satisfied that they’re getting what they were sold? No.

My suggestion is very simple. If someone cold-calls you, about anything actually, but especially anything to do with Internet marketing, just take a few moments to think. They obviously need you more than you need them. They’re not calling to do you a favour, they’re selling something. They may even be selling something that doesn’t exist, or is utterly worthless. If you need genuine help with Internet marketing, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), web site optimisation, Internet advertising or a whole host of other things to do with your web site – then you can either learn how and do it yourself, or there is real help available out there – I could recommend someone if you’re really stuck.

But please, whatever you do, don’t get scammed. Even by non-Mancunians.

In a week when my car was unceremoniously seriously injured by a motorist (thanks, Mr Farmer) who blamed me (the oncoming traffic) after he thought it’d be ok to execute a right turn across the carriageway from a stationary, parked position without indication or regard for oncoming traffic, I thought things couldn’t get much worse. So there I was, unloading my hire car in the loading bay in front of the Courtlands Hotel in Hove, for a breakfast business meeting, thinking “it’d be just my luck to be ticketed in a loading bay, but at least I’m loading”… only to return to the car at 8:25am in the middle of loading again to see a traffic warden – sorry, Civil Enforcement Officer – issuing a parking ticket – sorry, Penalty Charge Notice (PCN). I’ve had experience of these before, of course, and rarely as a result of illegal parking – see “ One Hour’s Parking for the Price of Two” for the last piece of Brighton & Hove City Council idiocy.

This particular traffic warden (number 685 – from his “signature” he’s called Mr Squiggle) seemed to be taking far too much pleasure from the mere routine issue of a piece of bureaucratic paperwork, as do many of them. It’s important to realise that Brighton & Hove City Council’s Civil Enforcement Officers – please let’s just call them traffic wardens for sanity’s sake – are not given direct incentives or enticements to issue tickets, which might encourage them to issue more and more marginal tickets in order to achieve their personal or set targets. No, that would just be good old plain wrong. However according to Brighton & Hove City Council staff, absolutely nothing is done to prevent staff from maintaining private bets and sweepstakes which might engender an undue sense of competition between traffic wardens, and according to at least one member of staff these are rife. Such activities in other sectors would be regarded as acts of gross professional misconduct, but the parking business is rather different. In addition, there is strong first-hand evidence to suggest that the Council sets targets for parking revenues, and that traffic wardens who are underperforming face disciplinary action and loss of employment. OK, so scratch my “no direct incentives or enticements” statement… I think you can safely say that there are incredibly strong incentives for staff to issue as many parking tickets as possible.

Of course the system is built with no flexibility – or indeed politeness. Once you’ve been issued with a ticket, the only ways out are through the system and out the other side – either by written appeal, paying the penalty, or fighting bailiffs (which the Council parking staff love to threaten you with) & going to court. So once that ticket is printed out from the proudly wielded little electronic device the traffic wardens all carry, it has already cost you time and money. Since this ticket was issued wrongly, I should be charging for my time spent on the matter by invoicing the Council and chasing for the debt – but there’s no “sorry we cocked up” latitude built into the system either. Parking has been set in legislation as a legalised racket which Councils and private firms can exploit to their hearts’ content.

And all the little hitlers can go on having fun and making money at our expense – twice – because while we pay with our Council Tax for their perversely pleasurable little betting games, we also pay for the entire machine to grind away raking in our parking fines too. What an utter waste of time, money and resources. Please, Mr Osborne, how about we cut the parking bureaucracy first?

See also Testing the Parking Tribunal and Parking Tribunal Victory over Brighton & Hove City Council

This unadvertised special offer from Brighton & Hove City Council occurred on… yes you guessed it, April 1st. So how many others received PCNs (Penalty Charge Notices) erroneously? How much has it all cost to sort out?

Just to explain, for some reason some Brighton parking ticket machines were issuing one-hour tickets when they should have been issuing two-hour tickets. Yes it’s all so easy to sort out, but why should I have to spend my valuable time sorting out yet another Brighton & Hove City Council bureaucratic cock-up? It might help if they employed Parking Wardens with brains… sorry, “Civil Enforcement Officers”.

Oh dear, now I’ll probably be chastised & hated for insulting council workers… but let’s face it, it doesn’t take much brain power to work out that a parking machine saying “£3 for up to 2 hours” and a parking ticket saying £3 paid for 13:12 to 14:12 means that no PCN should have been issued in the first place!

When an airline destroys your suitcase on your outbound flight, you’d like to expect that they’d be not only apologetic but also perhaps actively help you find a replacement for the journey home. Alas in Monarch’s case they failed on every step of the way to customer service satisfaction.

We reported the completely smashed International Traveller hard-shell suitcase at Grenoble Airport, where we did the necessary paperwork and were told we’d have to contact Monarch within seven days in order to claim compensation. That meant we’d have to do it while we were in France. The suitcase was unsalvageable so we’d also have to source a replacement whilst in the ski resort of La Plagne, where it’s easy to find ski or snowboarding stuff but incredibly hard (and expensive) to get items such as suitcases.

So, during the week we took time out from what we were meant to be doing on a skiing holiday to talk to Monarch about the claim and find a new suitcase. All we had was mobile phone, so at our great cost we called Monarch and held on listening to some of the most expensive hold-music ever created, before speaking to a lady who took all our details and offered us a measly £45 compensation. As I said, it’s incredibly hard finding something so mundane as a suitcase in a skiing resort with village/small town facilities and a single-minded focus on snow sports. On the third trip around the shops my girlfriend managed to find a large Ripcurl bag for €130, which at the time was near enough £130 – leaving us with a whopping £85 shortfall on a new bag which we were only buying because our suitcase had been smashed by people working on behalf of Monarch Airlines. Oh, and nothing to say sorry for all the time wasted, skiing missed and roaming phone costs endured.

Around 10 days after we returned, the cheque for £45 turned up in the post along with a letter that was full of empty apologetic platitudes which had exactly the same effect as if they’d included a hand-scribbled note saying “sod off and don’t waste our time in future”. Completely meaningless, corporate waffle, devoid of any real conviction, and rendered meaningless by the accompanying derisory compensation. All of which leads me to the unescapable conclusion that Monarch Airlines doesn’t actually care about its customers at all, and in a cut-throat and competitive market place, that is surely a rather stupid attitude to have.

I’m finally turning away from Royal Mail for most of my business carriage. I’ve tried to remain loyal, after all it’s one of those Great British Institutions, isn’t it? But when it’s this painful, you’ve got to wonder… are Royal Mail management really trying to commit commercial suicide? It certainly looks that way from here.

We have been using Royal Mail Smartstamp to prepay and locally print postage labels. It’s an imperfect solution, particularly for tracked services like “signed for” (or recorded delivery as it used to be known) and “special delivery”. Those services have to be completed at a post office where most of the staff either don’t know how to handle them or really can’t be bothered. That’s if you can find a post office that’s open when you need to post something. Many were closed in major cuts during 2008. I went to four of them one Wednesday afternoon & found all closed. All are in roads with parking problems and not at all easy to use. On my fifth attempt on the following day I was told my package was too big for their window & should be taken to a main post office. So not wanting to give up before the sixth attempt I went to the nearest main post office only to be told that my item was 11cm too big to be sent as a signed-for item. And still my customer is waiting.

Part of the problem seems to stem from the split of the Post Office from Royal Mail years ago. It created a complete disconnection between the two halves of the process. Neither really knows what the other half is doing, or cares about the customers caught between the two halves.

So it’s off to a courier company for me, and RIP Royal Mail, once it finally breathes its last and dies.