Thanks. And, yes, that point about not seeking to mitigate so-called losses is a good one as well, I'd say. In fact I see from the NTK that the claimed observation time then shown as "period of parking" is from 10:46:11 to 10:46:24, a whole 13 seconds! And as for parking companies, no, I have no illusions whatever about them as upright, ethical companies. That's all very helpful, so thanks everyone.

Thanks. That link is interesting and although IANAL it does look as if this notice mentioned above is also a forbidding one rather than an offer in similar manner ("No parking at any time") to the cited one. Specifically it says "No parking or waiting in the roadway or on the footway/verge and any time. These Terms and Conditions apply to all motorised vehicles." It goes on to say that "a £90.00 fixed charge may be issued if you park or wait" [wrongly] ... [that] disabled badge holders are not exempt, comments on discounts and additional charges, that photographs may be used in evidence and gives contact details.

Thanks, both. I understand that double yellow lines on private land will not have the same meaning or restriction as on the highway but Napier, or whoever, is perfectly entitled to paint them on the ground and stick up notices prohibiting parking on the roadway. I don't think that's really the point as Napier has, and shows on its sign, a general prohibition on parking anywhere except in the designated spaces. And as for "penalty", no, Napier didn't use that, that's my wording, intentionally chosen. The issue, as I see it, is that Napier has issued some prohibitions and my wife apparently broke these. I mentioned lines initially and the fact that she hadn't realised she was on private ground as possibly leading to a claim that the area was misleadingly shown, irrespective of what the large notice said. (On public roads in general she's permitted to park on DYLs with a disabled permit and it certainly had that effect in her case.) Now I know perfectly well that the way of working of such operators is to set traps and catch people then duly dun them for large sums so really my questions are around whether in Napier's actions/signage/documents they've fallen down somewhere and, secondly, what their general approach is and what my wife should now do.

Thanks. No, I've no illusions about IPC! In fact, though, the denial of the appeal was from Napier, not (yet, possibly) IPC.

On 17 May my wife went to visit a business located at St Andrew's Industrial Estate, Bridport, DT6 3EX to collect an item waiting for her at a local business. Finding all designated spaces full and because she has a disability parking permit she stopped on double yellow lines on the roadway and duly displayed her permit. She was away for a short period, perhaps five minutes at most, r eturned to her vehicle and as she was about to drive off noticed an attendant photographing her vehicle. She spoke to the attendant to explain her actions and was apparently advised by him to appeal and to show in evidence the receipt she'd received from the business mentioned. A few days later she received an NTK in the post. A redacted copy of this is copied into three PDF attached. She replied to the company on 29 May explaining why she'd been obliged to park on the road and arguing that a. the charge was not proportionate to any offence; b. that she had taken care not to park badly or affect road usage or other traffic; c. that she had displayed her disabled permit as required; d. that there was apparently no pavement marking indicating parking prohibition and nor was there any evidence given at the start of the relevant road that the are was not an ordinary local authority road; e. that in fact she could have left immediately prior to having been photographed but waited to speak to the attendant seeing that he was preparing to photograph the vehicle. [in fact, as the image sent later implies, this was may not have been the case, although equally she may have seen him in her mirror.] She added that she then drove to collect something from another trader on the estate and is prepared to argue the, in her view, main point about disproportionality with the IPC. This letter brought an email with attached PDF with the typical nonsense about having carefully considered etc. and turning down the appeal. It added a third photograph, this taken from behind the van and shown as taken a second earlier than that in the front. In the images it's a little difficult to read the content of the large notice except that the headline is very clear as to the prohibition and about a third of the way down there's a disabled parking icon and, presumably, some comment as to no exception. Granted she's strictly at fault for not regarding the notice but that's easily done I agree entirely with her about the disproportionate penalty - which is of course £90 rather than £50 should she, quite properly, choose to appeal further - and about the lack of concern or consideration for a genuine mistake. What advice would anyone give as to her next steps or to the likely further course of action on the part of Napier. TIA CMNTK 00.pdf CMNTK 01.pdf CMNTK 02.pdf

Thanks. That's very helpful. I'd expect that if anyone accepted the FOS recommendation then they couldn't go on to initiate a separate action. However, I wasn't sure whether the fact that FOS had cited Bank of Scotland would also effectively bar my sueing a legally different company, such as HFC. Reading the Evershed comment, although it doesn't specifically mention such a situation, suggests that it probably would. I might email the guy mentioned there and ask him that as a simple question.

Thanks. Yes, that's pretty much my thinking as well.

In September 2008 I asked Marbles, then both owned and managed by HFC Bank Limited, to make a balance transfer with plenty of time in hand to complete it and subsequent transfers. This was intended to clear another c/c account so that I could make a further transfer (on promotional rates) to a third c/c company to clear that balance in turn so that I could then take advantage of a promotional offer of 6.9% for life. Marbles screwed things up thoroughly not once, not twice but three times and compounded the problem at the last possible moment by dramatically reducing my credit limit so that, among other matters, a finally agreed additional transfer direct to the third c/c company failed the day after it had been both agreed and initiated by Marbles. I calculate that over the life of the balance I would have transferred from the c/c company offering the 6.9% for life (around £8000) which I was unable to initiate in time as a direct result of Marbles's various failures and other actions, I have paid or shall end up paying approaching £4,000 in extra interest (interest at 16.9% instead of at 6.9%). Foolishly, perhaps, I complained to the FOS, approaching them three years ago. I've had four different adjudicators, two of whom were completely incompetent, one of whom was only moderately incompetent and one who was brilliant but who sadly left the service before completing the case (he told me he accepted my argument and was minded to agree completely with my claim). I made a formal complaint of maladministration against one adjudicator and in due course asked for the case to be looked at by an ombudsman. The ombudsman has now made his decision - Marbles 'could have behaved better' and Bank of Scotland should therefore pay me £125 in compensation, a figure which the first, and utterly incompetent, adjudicator came up with over two years ago. I've decided, in consequence, that I should take the matter to court, hopefully to the small claims track. However, matters are now complicated in terms of ownership and I'm not clear whom I should name as the defendant. Clearly I need to get this right. At the time of the incidents 'marbles' and 'the marbles card' were trading names of HFC Bank Limited and as far as I know it was HFC Bank who managed the balance transfer process. Certainly my initial complaint to 'marbles' was answered by HFC Bank on HFC Bank headed paper. It happens also that I recorded the entire 13 conversations with Marbles staff, beginning with the initial enquiry as to what had happened to the by then missing balance transfer; this totalled around 3.5 hours and runs to about 64pp of transcript and during this 'HFC Bank' is mentioned on at least one occasion. When I complained to the FOS I think this was still the case but shortly afterwards the 'marbles' operation was taken over by the Bank of Scotland under licence from, I believe, still HFC Bank. At or around this point the FOS considered my complaint to be made against the Bank of Scotland. At some further point, possibly at around this same time, HFC Bank transferred its interest in the 'marbles' and related trademarks to Aviemore Funding Limited who continued licensing the relevant trademarks to the Bank of Scotland. It's also possible that the change from HFC Bank to Aviemore Funding coincided with the latter licensing the names to Bank of Scotland as they didn't want to run the trading exercise themselves - I simply haven't found out that detail yet. I now learn that as of next month Bank of Scotland is going to be replaced by an entity called Progressive Credit Limited. Interestingly Progressive Credit Limited and Aviemore Funding Limited share the same address in West Malling, Kent. Whether they share the same officers I don't yet know but in any case they're clearly separate legal entitities. Given that the problems took place during the HFC ownership/management and that HFC then owned the trading names and also still exists and trades I should have thought my approach would be to sue HFC despite the fact that the FOS decided that it was the Bank of Scotland that had to answer and pay compensation. It certainly seems fair that as they screwed up they should be chased. Or should I follow the FOS approach and sue the BoS? This would imply, I suppose, that if the management of the trading names changes yet again then I should instead sue this new company Progressive Credit. Or should it be Aviemore Funding in the firing line? There's a further point. I presume that if I accept the meagre £125 directed by the FOS to be paid by the BoS then that would settle my claim and I would not then be free to sue BoS. Would that be the case? Alternatively, however, would accepting the BoS settlement still leave me free to sue HFC Bank (or one of the other two) as the FOS direction is specifically about the BoS?

Fascinating! Just checked through the information sent to me by MBNA in response to my follow-up SAR and find a couple of letters apparently (but not in practice) sent to me from Sean Humphreys, Director of Customer Satisfaction, one for each account and each dated 14 July which say: " ... Thanks for getting in touch recently. We're pleased to enclose a copy of your most recent terms and conditions. Don't forget some of the other fantastic features of your account: [encouragement to use the internet] We'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for your custom and we look forward to hearing from you soon. ..." Standard meaningless letters, of course, but why they're interesting is because the date is some six weeks after the accounts were apparently terminated and duly sold on to CapQuest!

Interesting letter from CapQuest, specifically from a Ms McEvoy who calls herself 'Qualilty Assurance Officer', just received: Dear Darset ... I confirm that the above referenced account is now in the process of being closed on CapQuest's system in order that it may be returned directly to MBNA. You will receive no further correspondence from CapQuest regarding this account. I thank you for taking the time to resolve this matter and inform CapQuest of your dispute with MBNA in order that this matter may be resolved. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. Should you wish to discuss this matter further please contact me on 0870 084 3586. So at least CapQuest accepts that a dispute exists even if MBNA doesn't. Presumably also the words "bargepole" and "touch" came to mind as they reviewed the file. What, I wonder, will MBNA do next? Right now I have a complaint in to the ICO - which I'm about to add to - and the support of the local TSO who recommends a complaint to the FOS. I need to think about what's best here but some form of ratchetting up the ante seems appropriate. Anyone been through a similar process with MBNA and either CapQuest or another debt collector?

Both accounts have now been passed to capQuest Debt Recovery, about three to four weeks apart, and cQ has been in touch with broadly similar letters. A suitably amended copy of the most recent one is attached as a PDF. I've replied (also attached) saying basically that I don't recognise their right to deal with the issue and advising them to return the stuff to MBNA. When I get a moment I'm going to research capQuest and see if there are links back to MBNA other than as supplier and customer. I've had a quick look on the Companies House web site and there's half a dozen or more capQuest , including a capQuest Group. I've also seen a note that refers to them as ultimately in the control of a Bahamas company owned in turn by a pair of USanian vulture capitalists: see Capquest Debt Recovery - Read This! ('Vulture capitalists', in case anyone's unfamiliar with the term, are those who buy up distressed debt at low multiples and seek to recover the full amount; they more typically operate at whole country level and are particularly, and obscenely, active in Africa and to some extent in South America.) If anyone knows about them or has had dealings with them it would be interesting to learn more. Incidentally, 01252 576438 is an ordinary geographical number for capQuest, an alternative to the 0870 premium one. CapQuest 01.pdf CapQuest 01.rtf

Thanks cB. Yes, I'm pretty sure that there's information missing, probably both as regards telephone transcripts or recordings and information in respect of making decisions about managing the account. I spoke with someone from the ICO on Thursday and they recommended sending in this new information and adding it to the existing complaint. So the next thing is to go through carefully what MBNA has supplied, match it with what I judge they're likely to have (from internal and other evidence), establish clearly from the relevant Act what rights I have and duly send the fully annotated material in to the ICO. (Good job this is temporarily a quiet period!). MBNA has sent the ongoing log of communcation with me, which I guess is what you're referring to, and as you say that's a useful source of information.

Got the SAR data back earlier this month and am just going through it. Various things jumped out immediately so I've already checked with the ICO whose advice is to write again to them adding on further complaints to my earlier one. Firstly, MBNA said that as they'd sent me the data in December there was no need to repeat all that and so they're sending only new stuff. That's OK, I suppose, although I should have preferred to have had everything a second time so that I could do a close comparison to see if anything had changed. The ICO says that if a second request is made within a 'reasonable' time of the first then there isn't a need to repeat everything and that although 'reasonable' isn't defined that the requests were only six months apart might mean that MBNA's action was acceptable. I think I'm going to suggest to the ICO when I write that six months might be 'reasonable' in an ordinary situation where nothing much is happening but in a state of conflict, as here, it's not. Secondly, MBNA says 'I have been unable to locate recordings of any telephone conversations' and that therefore none are enclosed. Given that I submitted a list of pretty much a score of dates/times which I know to be accurate (having either recorded the conversation myself, duly date stamped, or else noted date and time on other occasions) this seems extraordinary. The implication of no recordings being locatable is that no recordings can subsequently be used in evidence by MBNA and, further, MBNA cannot reasonably challenge recordings I produce myself. Even allowing for the substantial number of telephone conversations daily it seems extraordinary that MBNA can find none and this will certainly be a matter to be referred to the ICO. Thirdly, MBNA has again sidestepped my request for revealing information which relates to their processes of taking decisions about matters like interest rate hikes or securitisation. They've not referred to this but a quick glance at the material suggests that nothing is there so that's a further definite matter for the ICO.

As MBNA is still trundling down its standard path and paying not the slightest attention to their present failure I thought it was time to put more pressure on them and so I've made a second SAR. This was posted on 18 May and duly delivered to their offices on 19 May, according to Royal Mail. Since sending my earlier SAR in November 2008 I've learned a lot more - from both here and the ICO website - and so on this occasion I sought to cover all angles permitted. In particular, I asked for audio recordings, manually stored material and personal data arising as a result of automatic processing of the account, all of which appear to be covered by the DPA and the ICO's interpretation. The ICO says that audio recordings are covered but that it may be necessary to help the data holder identify where they are by giving date/time information and, ever anxious to be as helpful as possible where darlin' MBNA is concerned, I've included a list of twenty-odd occasions. However I should be surprised if the only access to the substantial audio library which companies such as MBNA keep was by going through them in linear fashion; this would certainly have been true earlier but the consequence of that is that it would be immensely difficult for a bank to abstract a specific recording with a customer for evidence and so I imagine updated systems will use indexes or and/or inverted indexes and, that being so, I would think they would fall clearly within the area the ICO would say should be revealed fully. The manual data storage and the results of personal data from automatic account management are also potentially very fruitful areas and as they're clearly covered it will be interesting to see MBNA's reponse. At any rate the suitably redacted SAR letter is attached. Comments welcome! MBNA 2nd DPA request 00.rtf

I nearly followed your advice in my most recent letter to MBNA but in the end took a more conventional route. Received all in the same post, pretty much, a couple of letters one each from the competitors for the position of Head of Customer Assistance, Paul Campbell and Dee Dillistone, together with a Mickey Mouse default notice from someone else (various things wrong with it which I'll go into another time). Also had a call from another chaser, a more urbane one this time, Richard Phil(l)ips who at least had the confidence his colleagues lacked or perhaps was less ashamed working for MBNA, who kept trying to get me to admit I'd 'spent the money' as he kept putting it. Told him repeatedly that was irrelevant, the point being that MBNA was simply not meeting its legal obligations, to which he remarked that he supposed I'd been advised not to admit it. It seems clear that the default notice is another attempted frightener rather than the real thing - either that or the company is even more monumentally incompetent than I'd thought - but I thought I'd reply to it to avoid raising any concerns prematurely and so sent the letter attached here. MBNA re default 0.rtf