Yeah, Marstons sent us a letter. Not 5 days later we got that notice about the distress warrant. Wish I could ask for £75 for something as small as a letter. B/

That's what we'll do then. Thanks! Thanks to the lovely (not) Mr McGovern we can't afford to get to Exeter Magistrates until next Wednesday. :/ It's best to go there in person but would ringing them up be of any help at all? Edit: Also, I believe quite a lot of that 365 was Marston's fees. :/ Surely just Failure to display doesn't amount to £365. The stupid letter says "£365 inclusive of fees" so I think they added some extra onto what we owed DVLA. It just doesn't say WHAT the original fine was, assuming we'll need to bug the DVLA/the courts about that.

Thanks for that link Ploddertom. My mum paid him this morning unfortunately, from the sounds of other posts it's unlikely he'd have knocked anyway, just left us another note with even more fees we apparently owe. At the very least it's got him off our back for now. Small help but a help nonetheless. Even if it takes 9 months, fighting back is worth it I think. Where do we go from here?

So this airs on ITV1 on the 31st of this month? Any idea what time? (I assume probably 9pm like many things like this) I'll be watching with great interest, and a big smirk on my face knowing they'll be squirming about it.

Thanks! From what I understand so far, they can't actually force entry on this "Distress Warrant" unless it's for criminal fines. Now we're being issued because of "Failure to display valid car tax", not "Driving without car tax" as our car WAS taxed and we should still have the papers/emails to prove such (the DVLA -should- still have it on file as well). So I assume "Failure to display" doesn't count as Criminal. At this point, we'll likely just pay the £365 tomorrow to get them off our back for now and do some more digging as to how we can appeal it and complain about Marston Group and this Mr McGovern. We can just about afford to scrape it together.

What a lovely piece of work he is. =.= What on earth is this "Distress Warrant"? I've never heard of this before and the wording makes it sound like it grants him the ability to enter.

His note pushed through the door says he already has a "Distress Warrant" issued against us, I know you said not to listen to them but ... scary wording is scary. Does this Distress Warrant mean he can get a locksmith to open our front door? Edit: Our car is around the back, they likely wouldn't know which was ours anyway and clamping would be futile, it has 2 flat tires and is unable to be driven anyway.

Don't worry, I understand the bluntness. We're completely alien to all this, not once have we had anything like this happen before. We've got a real problem though. Having not dealt with anything like this and being really flustered by it - we can't afford a taxi to the court IF it transpires we need to pay this Marston Group as well tomorrow. How do we make sure they don't force their way in while we're off at the court? If someone stayed in and was silent (well practiced at that, used to do so when I was young and our mum was out) and rang the police if they forced their way in, would that help at all? Also worried they'll take away our dogs, as they would bark and be very upset at someone forcing their way in while we were out.

My mum rang this Mr McGovern and asked him straight, if we give him the £365 over the phone by direct debit before the bailiffs arrive, will it be JUST the £365 and he said yes. We intend to hold him to that (that's literally all the money we have anyway.) We're really pretty worried over all this, they even threatened to get the RSPCA to take our dogs away if they deemed them "worth anything" :/ So we'll probably just pay the £365 as soon as possible tomorrow. Getting up at 5:30 to check the bank and then ring Mr McGovern. Good to hear it's likely that we can appeal against it all afterwards though. Edit - Yeah, we still have our Tax Disc. Actually I'm gonna go get it and put it somewhere safe where it can't be misplaced. (And I really don't trust them not to take it themselves.)

Also, is there anything we can do after the fact? We're really worried at this point. If we pay the £365 is there any way we can appeal it afterwards?

Nope, just double checked with my mum and we never received a court summons for this. We literally heard nothing of this until about a week ago. When they arrive what do we say? They're telling us; "I, Mr McGovern attended your address today to execute a Distress Warrant issued against you by HMCS Devon & Cornwall Magistrates Court. The amount out standing is £365. I have been refused entry/unable to contact you at the address and believe you are willfully trying to evade payment of this account. You should be aware that there exists a power under Schedule 4A of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act to enable us to enter your property, BY FORCE, using locksmiths where required, to execute this warrant." That's the note that came in our door today.

Hey, I'm the person MoonGazer is talking about. Just signed up. (Sorry for all the cut out swears :c Came from a rant topic and I was very angry). It's pretty much all as it says. In December when it snowed our car was covered like pretty much every other car. We didn't even bother wiping it off as we knew we couldn't drive it. During that snowy time, the tax was to run out (we actually forgot and only renewed it the day before it ran out). My mum rang the DVLA and they said it's okay to do it online because the information would be updated on their systems whilst the tax disc itself was in the mail. We did it online and waited but for whatever reason it never arrived - we had to wait nearly an entire month for it to get here AND it had to be sent again because the first one magically disappeared. We were stopped by the police in that time (we were told by the DVLA to keep the old one displayed rather than have none at all), we explained it and they checked their computers and we were on our way. As far as we knew, that was the end of it. Apparently it'd been seen in a car park without valid tax (the old disc) and they sent us some letter about it, we sent a letter back saying it WAS taxed and explained why the tax disc wasn't there. No reply again, assumed that meant it was okay? Then about a week ago we got a letter from Marston Group telling us we owe £365 to HMCS Devon & Cornwall. We had no idea what that was for or about and today we got a note through our door telling they have a warrant from the magistrates court and are coming tomorrow (the 13th) and will enter via a locksmith if we don't answer the door and will take away belongings they deem up to the value of £365. I've no idea why they're taking such action so soon, or why we can't even talk about it. The person my mum spoke to on the phone to explain everything I just did wouldn't even give her the time of day and the jist of his reply was "Well we're coming and taking stuff if you don't have the money tomorrow." Pretty sure that's about it.