yourhavingalarf:
Conor:
Oh god you’re one of those. Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay has had plenty of episodes with bailiffs who have turned up to the houses of people who followed your advice.
Can’t Pay Won’t Pay…
As far as I’m aware, has never screened an episode where the opening line was ‘we’re off to claim £500 for an un-paid parking ticket’. The vast majority of shows involve non payment of rent.
They are also unlikely to show the cases where they turn up, knock, no answer, return to base empty handed, and bill the claimant/creditor for attendance.
I’d never recommend that people ignore actual court action - that is, letters from judges, court managers, or forms which are stamped with the seal of the court.
But it may be an effective strategy to simply ignore demands and begging letters from private companies, provided you are willing to fight the case hard if they do proceed to court, and also settle the claim if they win.
This strategy imposes both the maximum uncertainty upon them before embarking on court action, and imposes the most grievous up-front costs on them at every step of the way if they do proceed to court, so companies motivated by profit and cash flow (rather than, for example, public authorities motivated by principle and with bottomless pockets) are likely to desist or pursue only a tiny fraction of cases.
It is only the corollary to the morally bankrupt way in which they behave and attempt to impose swingeing charges for minor or brief parking infractions. And their main method of generating profit is from those who simply pay up, with nothing spent on it other than the cost of a computer generated letter and a franked envelope.
Taking a single case to court, once all staff time and court costs are paid out, may cost a private parking company the proceeds from many dozens of fines which were paid without quibble, and if they target someone determined not to pay or totally unable to pay or who goes bankrupt shortly after (or who doesn’t even exist, or whose details have been recorded fraudulently or inaccurately at DVLA) then they may never get a penny back, so they are extremely conservative about pursuing unknown debtors.
You change the equation entirely if you correspond with them from the outset, admitting that it is your vehicle, that you were the driver, that they have the correct details, that you seem like the sort of person who can be forced to pay, etc.
And they know (from experience, if nothing else) that the sorts of people who run up fines and don’t correspond, tend to be an adverse selection of society, with many being the sort of people with nothing to lose or who quickly become untraceable.
It’s not enough for them to win and successfully enforce only some cases issued at court, because the costs of the cases where they don’t get a penny back will quickly exceed the small profits from the wins.
