If the OP is not the RK, but wants to assist the RK, a family member, then the OP can just do everything in the RKs name. This is not some clandestine operation to deceive anyone.
No initial appeal is going to be successful, no matter how prosaic the appeal. There is no money in it for these scammers. You are not dealing with some corporate organisation with a dedicated customer service ethos. This firm is a bunch of ex clamper thugs who are members of the BPA cartel. They want your money and will pursue the RK all the way to a county court claim.
You may also want to think that POPLA is some kind of independent organisation. They aren’t. They are a private business, funded by he very same firms they are supposedly adjudicating. POPLA assessors are, in general, just ordinary people who have received some minimal training. They aren’t not legally qualified in any way. Some of them are utter morons with very little ability to understand contract law. POPLA are answerable to no one. There is no overreaching organisation or ombudsman that they must answer to.
If POPLA accept the appeal, then good. However, if they don’t, their decision is not binding on the appellant. They can be safely ignored. It is the next step of the process where most of the low-hanging fruit are picked off.
The debt recovery stage is designed to intimidate the gullible into paying up because the majority are ignorant of their rights and how this process works. Suddenly they start receiving letters from debt collectors which threaten all sorts of nastiness and throw in scary words like “CCJ” and Bailiff” etc. suddenly, a fake £70 has been added and the recipient goes into “poop their pants” mode and many just pay up because of their ignorance of how the debt recovery system works,
Suffice it to say, debt collectors are not a party to any contract allegedly breached by the driver. They are powerless except to be able to prey on the majority of victims ignorance of the civil justice system. It doesn’t help that most people will have no idea about the difference between the civil and criminal justice system.
The number of motorists we deal with here, think that “court” is the equivalent of a wigged judge, robes, barristers and so on. Their ignorance of the system extends to nightmares that one a claim is issued, they have a CCJ and their credit record is trashed. Again, the majority, who have not been educated by us, capitulate and pay up, as I say, out of ignorance and fear.
However, nothing could be further from the truth and these scamming firms know it but hate us for making a tiny pinprick in their armour and profits. In the vast majority of cases, these vexatious firms of scamming ex-clampers never follow through all the way to a hearing.
In most cases, the claim will either be struck out or discontinued. They don’t want a spanking in court. They know their witness statements are mendacious. Their adherence to the law is tenuous, at best. Most defendants are unsure of their rights and consumer law. Most have no idea how contract law works in these cases.
In the very few that ever get as far as a hearing, the majority are won. The very few that are not successful end up paying less than the original claim amount because most judges are aware of the fake add on £70 fees which are an attempt at “double recovery” and opens the claimant up to costs orders for unreasonable behaviour.
I can say with greater than 99.9% confidence, that in this case, a UKPC claimant will be represented by DCB Legal for the claim. As long as the claim is defended, and we provide the template for the defence, the claim will either be struck out of discontinued just before they have to pay the £27 trial fee.
The process takes approximately 9-12+ months from receipt of the PCN to successful conclusion. There is a bit of time involved in the appeal process and the defence and Directions Questionnaire submission but apart from that, you are hand held all the way through the process.
So, the advice, should you care to take it, is to make as little effort as necessary on the initial appeal, put some minimal effort in the POPLA appeal and, if unsuccessful, ignore the useless debt recovery stage and come back when a Letter of Claim (LoC) is received and defend and win with a greater than 99.9% chance of success.
