A pensioner says he still fighting £325 worth of parking fines issued more than four years ago for a car he no longer owned at the time.
Merrick Clarke, 69, from Rugby, Warwickshire, sold his Peugeot in September 2020, and initially kept the paperwork.
Over the following months, two tickets were issued for parking violations involving the car at a hospital parking lot.
Mr Clarke reportedly first became aware of the problem last January when he received a letter from debt recovery firm DCBL, who were acting on behalf of Parking Eye, who manage the lot.
He told them he was no longer the owner and gave them details of the car’s new owner, whom he also notified of the fines.
DCBL threatened legal action and refused to back down unless he could provide paperwork, but by that time he had got rid of it.
‘I got rid of all [the paperwork] because two years later you don’t expect to need it,’ Mr Clarke told MailOnline.
‘You don’t expect really to be taken to court over a car that you don’t own.’
‘The tickets kept coming, and so I kept was phoning. It was getting ridiculous. Then I started getting serious letters saying, “We’re going to take you to court”.’
He says he asked DCBL to prove he was the owner but they refused.
The car’s new owner even attempted to pay the fine but the debt collectors refused as he ‘wasn’t the person on their system that was supposed to be paying it’.
”So I formally wrote to them, I give you permission to pursue X person at Y address as the rightful owner of the car in question,’ Mr Clarke added.
Mr Clarke asked the DVLA to provide proof he was no longer the car’s owner but did not hear back to due Covid-related backlogs.
He was also unable to attend the court hearing as he was living in France.
The court ruled against him and he had to pay the £325 fine as well as around £75 in additional costs.
He later received more letters for tickets linked to the car, but by this time the DVLA had sent him proof he hadn’t owner the car since 2020.
DCBL eventually cancelled the fine and apologised to Mr Clarke but said he would have to pursue Parking Eye to challenge the existing £400 losses – but the company bounced him back to the debt collectors.
Mr Clarke says he will now launch a small claims case to get the money back.
‘What I get really frustrated about is there’s no way to fight these people,’ he added.
‘It’s a circle that you can’t get out of, because they keep blaming each other.’
Parking Eye has said it secured the ownership details at the time of the fine through the DVLA, which produced Mr Clarke’s name and address.
It says four letters were sent to the address but no reply was received.
In a statement provided to MailOnline, a spokesperson for the firm said: ‘Parkingeye operates a BPA (British Parking Association) audited appeals process, which motorists can use to appeal their parking charge and highlight any mitigating circumstances.
‘Mr Clarke failed to use the formal appeals process to advise us and provide evidence that the ownership of the vehicle had changed. Due to not engaging with our process in any way the cases were escalated to debt recovery and the County Court.
‘Mr Clarke first got in touch with us in February this year, well over four years after the charges were issued to his address.
‘If he had used our appeals process and engaged with our successive rounds of correspondence in 2020, we would have been able to investigate and the cases could have been resolved for Mr Clarke.
‘However once it moves to debt recovery, he would need to engage with their process to provide any supporting evidence and resolve.’
DCBL Legal has been approached for comment.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
