Bailiffs
Before I start the story, I'd like to say that I admit that it's all initially my own fault for doing something wrong. That's my bad and I guess I paid for it. But I do think it could all have been handled very, very differently.

Ok, I'm starting the story now...

One morning, I was woken up by my dad knocking on my bedroom door. He said there was someone at the front door to see me, so I went downstairs.

"Hello sir, I'm a bailiff, I've clamped your car and will be towing it away unless you pay the fees, which come to £600."

I was rather surprised. This was the first I'd heard of any bailiff action so I asked what it was about. It took a while to get much sense out of him but basically it all stemmed from an unpaid parking ticket that was issued well over a year before the day he turned up on my doorstep.

It was one of those CCTV camera tickets, so nobody had ever put anything under my windscreen wipers. And to make matters worse, I had moved back home (split with girlfriend) and there had been a few months when I didn't update my address with the DVLA (this is why it's all technically my fault - the entire fiasco hinges on this one mistake on my part).

So... The ticket was issued and went to my old address. Several months later I had updated the registered address of my car, but they obviously didn't do a second check, they issued all subsequent reminders to the old address and, when I didn't pay, they sold the debt to a collection agency (ie a bunch of even bigger cunts).

So, that's why the bailiff is on my doorstep on this crisp spring morning. But wait a minute, aren't they supposed to notify you by letter that they intend to come round, and give you a chance to pay?

I asked him this, he said "yes, we did. We put a letter through your door last week."

"No you didn't."

"Yes we did. Look, here..."

He showed me a sheet of A4 paper with a date, hand-written in biro. The date was from the previous week.

"That doesn't prove anything," I said. "I can go and write a date on some paper, that doesn't mean I delivered a letter on that day." But he wasn't having any of it. I knew he was lying (my parents are fanatical about mail) but there's no way to prove that something didn't happen.

At this point I was wondering what my rights were so I shut the door in his face (I figured it's take a tow truck a good half hour to get there) and went to look on the interweb. One quick Google later and things weren't looking good. It seems that bailiffs operate in something of a legal grey area. There is a code of conduct but it's voluntary, the collection agencies aren't bound by it.

I called the number for my local police station, hoping for... Well... I don't know what I was hoping for but it doesn't matter because after 15 minutes on hold, It was obvious that they weren't answering.

I sat down and thought it through.

It all stemmed from my stupid laziness in updating my details with the DVLA. there was no doubt that I'd done something wrong and that I was liable to pay some sort of fine. But he'd said that the fine itself was about £200 and the other £400 was because he was on the doorstep, clamping and calling a tow-truck.

So if he'd put a letter through the door, I would only have had to pay £200. Still bad but a lot better than £600.

Could I prove that he hadn't put a letter through my door?

No. Impossible. You can't prove a negative and it would be his word against mine in court, which Google had just informed me they usually win.

My only two options were paying up or losing the car. It's not a great car but it's worth more than £600 so I decided to pay up.

But since I knew that it would take the tow truck a while to get there, I strung it out, argued, hurled abuse and generally made him work for it.

Motto: always update your car's registered address as soon as you move. In fact, do it beforehand.
(Jamey, Thu 26 Jul 2007, 14:17, Reply)