A Brighton Boy Blogs

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”.

Since we decided to leave Esporta Brighton, we’ve had no end of threatening behaviour from the company and its debt collector ARC Europe. This isn’t anything unusual, they’ve done it to lots of people – just try a Google search.

Esporta’s membership contract says that they can terminate a membership with one month’s notice, but that a member cancelling their membership must give three months notice – paid, of course. So when someone like me wants to leave because the facilities are poorly maintained and the club just isn’t up to scratch, they try to enforce this contact term. However, there is a piece of legislation called the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 which companies like Esporta should be rather wary of when they ask their lawyers to draft their contacts. Used in conjunction with the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, one can essentially ask a court of law to review a contract term, and if found to be unfair, the entire clause is struck from the contract. With nothing to replace it, standard UK trading laws take over and there’s nothing the company can do; with no fair cancellation clause in place, they’re not entitled to a penny.

Esporta’s contact terms relating to notice periods have already been ruled unfair by the Office of Fair Trading (see http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/consumer-regulations/traders/790/1/), along with quite a lot besides. This ruling would be taken into account by the courts in any case involving Esporta’s membership contracts. This means that nobody should be paying Esporta three months’ fees upon notice of cancellation. Unfortunately a lot of people give way to bullying from the company and its debt collectors. Why is this allowed to happen? Unfortunately a contract is only of any use when tested in a court of law. Since most people shudder at the thought of being taken to court by a big powerful company, most people just give in and pay up. It’s important not to give in, and to fight your corner, because that’s the only way companies like Esporta will be stopped.

Unfortunately this wasn’t all in our case. ARC Europe obtained copies of the contracts my girlfriend and I allegedly signed, and sent them through to us by way of a “now get out of that one” threat. To be honest, I didn’t remember signing a contract, so I was surprised they had a signed one to send me. Upon examination however, it wasn’t my signature. My girlfriend had signed, but I hadn’t. In place of my signature was a very poor forgery in the same handwriting style as that of the Esporta employee who had signed on behalf of the company.

Just to be clear about this, forging a signature on a contract is criminal fraud under UK law. Are Esporta really that desperate? Apparently the answer is yes.

April 2010 Update: lots of letters & phone calls received from ARC Europe (culminating in a threat of solicitors & legal action) & subsequently ScotCall – threatening doorstep collections – and then numerous phone calls from a call centre asking for payment and offering substantial discounts if we give them a card payment over the phone… and all addressed to my partner, not me. This is no doubt because she’s female and relatively young, and therefore seen as the easy target by the bully boys. Indeed she may have got scared & paid up anyway if I hadn’t been around. Finally, a Final Demand letter from ScotCall – saying that the balance remains unpaid despite their correspondence and that they have no choice but to… return the case to Esporta with a recommendation that they take further action. I’ll keep you posted of any further developments. Let me know if you’re also being harassed for money by Esporta & its cronies on the basis of an unfair contract.

Sometimes I get great service from a company and I’ll write about it. When I find serious fault with a company, I tend to report it on here too. If that company demonstrably puts things right, I tend to report that as well. Alas, that doesn’t happen very often. But recently I had a call from Mr John Collins, Managing Director of Kafevend Group Ltd who claimed that my previous report on Kafevend – an incident involving criminal fraud on the part of Kafevend’s sales staff – had been fully investigated and dealt with. So I allowed Mr Collins to come and tell me the story.

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