Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Private parking tickets => Topic started by: skycherry on March 11, 2026, 07:18:35 pm
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InterCity125
Thank you for the clarification. This has been a new topic for me, so that is good to know. You are correct the word "bailiff" is not used, that came from me. I have not received letters. Just a single text message.
ixxy
I would have agreed (and it might be), but they did have my car reg, having used Luton about 4 times in the last 6 months and it mentioned APCOA it did trigger my "I need to look into this..." sense. But yes, sending a randon "Pay us now!!" from some mobile number is a terrible way to do this.
DWMB2
This is very good to know, I will follow up on that. It has been wrong for a considerable amount of time. One of those life lessons - Update your V5C!!
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If there are any non personal details I can reveal to help I am happy to do so.
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If your V5C has been wrong for a considerable amount of time, one sensible (and free) step you can take is to send a Subject Access Request (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/make-a-subject-access-request-to-dvla) to the DVLA to find out who (if anyone) has accessed your keeper details during the period of time between you moving and you updating your V5C.
This will give you a bit of a heads up in case there might be any other outstanding parking charges from other companies that would have gone to your old address.
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I would assume this is a scam. Debt collection companies will contact you by post, they won't have your phone number. Even if they did a credit check and worked out you had moved they would then write to your new address. Ignore it. Anything important that you need to respond to will come in the post like a letter of claim.
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The bailiff is DRP.
It is super important to point out that DRP are not acting as a bailiff in this particular matter - I understand that they deliberately avoid making that obvious in their letters etc.
DRP are merely acting as a debt collector in this instance.
Other areas of DRP's activities may include acting as a bailiff but that is a very separate part of the business and would never relate to a private parking charge which had never even seen the inside of a court room.
They use words like 'bailiff' to imply that you are in 'deeper trouble' than you really are - their wording is deliberately set out to cause alarm to the recipient.
It should really be outlawed.
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Thank you for taking the time to respond, it is appreciated.
This has been a lesson for me for sure. I will ignore them.
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Our experience has been that APCOA doesn’t “do” court, in which case you ignore and do nothing.
Had you replied to APCOA within their appeal window, we could probably have advised something which would have resulted in a cancellation.
Now, you just have to ignore.
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Hi,
I got a text message today informing me about a parking charge on my car. I actually thought it was a spam/phish attempt. After doing some searching online and this great forum, I now believe it is related to Luton Airport drop off.
The bailiff is DRP. They are requesting £170. Parking charge issued by APCOA.
I have not recieved any information about this until this message today. Having looked through other forum threads, I checked my V5C and its my prior address, not current. I am going to get that changed asap. Do I have any chance to fight this? I have no information to even understand what date it was meant to be issued for.
Thank you for your time.
Kind regards