Sex, lies and Bailiffs.
A few years back I went shopping in Asda in Farnborough (The other half insisted we go visit this shit hole!). They operate a Pay and Display carpark and having no change to buy a ticket, and being of the mindset that "im bringing my money to the shit town i should not have to pay", i come out to a paking ticket on my windscreen.

To compound the error in judgment, i decided to ignore the ticket as i have done many times in the past (With a high degree of success i might add). So a few weeks later i get a letter from Rushmoor Borough Council telling me i have to pay a hundred odd quid as the offense had been logged with the court in Nottingham etc etc. I do the right thing and bin it.

More months go by until one morning i just pull into the car park at work when my wife phones me to tell me that a bailiff has just knocked at 7am looking for me and that i had to pay them 300 quid for parking fines and costs. I know a bit about the law see, and i know that a bailiff is not allowed to discuss my debt with anyone else, no matter who they are, but this bloke never even bothered to establish who he was talking to. First mistake.

After an earbashing from the wife that evening about losing all our possesions and the house etc, i decide to finally pay up the hundred quid to Rushmoor Council via online payment. I print a copy of the details to wave under the bailiffs nose if he came back.

Which he did. Many times. I wrote a letter to the council asking them to call off the bailiffs as i had already paid and they told me "tough shit, we accept your hundred quid but the bailiifs want their cut so they can keep coming till they get it." The bailiff kept comiing every other week and as my other half refused to open the door or was out at work they kept putting paperwork through the door each time adding more money too it and badly scrawled threats of "we are coming next time to take your goods". I was not bothered as i knew there was nothing they could do, however to placate my wife i decided to sort it. I wrote to the bailiff company and asked nicely if they would drop the matter as it had been sorted. I was sent a condecending letter from a witch of a woman who basically said "Fuck you, you pay".

After a few back and forth exchanges between myself and the bailiff office i looked up some bailiff law and discovered that they had made a grave error in calculating their costs as they had added costs for attending to remove, hire of a vehicle and added a charge for each attendance (which i cunningly got them to itemise in a letter). When i pointed out that they had not made any walking posession agreement so that attending to remove was bullshit, therefore so was the hire of a van and that the law states that they are allowed to charge attendance fees for the first three visits only (which they forgot to do!), oh and pointed out that they never even sent me a letter advising me of intention to attend (Ironically the only thing that they could charge for and didn't), they sent me a letter telling me that they had passed the matter back to the council and no further action was going to be taken! I think that threatening to get the court to check their costs might have been a deciding factor in it as if they were found to be charging too much they they could have the bailiff license suspended or even withdrawn.

The bailiff company in question? Some of you might know then already, Drakes Bailiffs. Yes those twats on the TV show of the same name (Bailiffs, not twats!).

So basically it cost me a hundred quid to park in Asda in Farnborough, but i had the satisfaction of really beating the bailiff! (They were in that too i believe).

So where is all the sex in this as implied by the title? Well, my wife was pregnant at the time, which makes them cunts for trying to threaten money out of a pregnant woman, and i suppose makes me a bad father/dad for letting it get that far. And lets not forget Rushmoor borough Council for allowing their chosen debt collectors break the law, which in legal terms makes them just as liable.

I learned my lesson now though. I dont got to Farnborough or Asda and my life has been so much better ever since. But one day, Rushmoor Borough Council is going to find itself paying out to clean up some kind of dirty protest to the tune of about a hundred quid....
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Thu 17 Jun 2010, 19:19, 6 replies)

Just park in B&Q like everyone else. That way you get one over on the council by not paying to park, and one on B&Q for using the car park and not buying anything.

That said, I spend a fortune in that place.....
(jono_h, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 21:40, closed)

I feel your pain - that Asda is a hellhole. The new Sainsburys round the corner is a lot nicer though :)
(epinephrine, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 21:56, closed)

What in the blazes...
...does a District Council in Notts have to do with a supermarket car park in Hants?

Or am I being geographically dim?
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Fri 18 Jun 2010, 11:12, closed)

Oh, hang on...
Rushmoor != Rushcliffe. I was confused by the "logged with the court in Nottingham" bit.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Fri 18 Jun 2010, 11:13, closed)

The parking fine people...
They register the fines with the fines unit in Nottingham somewhere. Its like the head office or something. They are the ones that you have to send your begging letters (Excuses for parking) to.
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Fri 18 Jun 2010, 22:48, closed)

Playing snooker with a mate one time...
I thought we'd have a couple of frames so only paid for an hour - unbeknown to me, my mate had done the same.

And so the snooker marathon began...

I came out 7-1 up (which counts as Spurs 7, Arsenal 1 as my mate is a gooner), to find a ticket plastered across my windscreen politely requesting £35 - my mate was pissing himself laughing until he found a similar one on his car :)

I amusedly pointed out that my ticket cost me £5 for every frame I'd won, while his cost £35 per frame...he wasn't happy.
( snee held his breath since, Mon 21 Jun 2010, 11:45, closed)