How the Bailiff Scam Works
Charles Robertson, North Kent
John Galt is a great asset and I wish him
all the best for the future as I have saved around £900+ of unnecessary
bailiff fees as well as a whole load of sleepless nights.
Read More...
How the bailiff gets involved
The councils approach the magistrate’s court to obtain a Liability Order, Warrant or Further Steps Order to claim unpaid bills. The magistrates give authority to the bailiff to collect the bills on behalf of the council. That document is the legal leverage that all bailiff companies need for them to attempt collection.
Bailiff firms bid for work from the local authorities. They can only collect priority debt. Priority debt is money owed to the state: council tax, court fines, parking tickets, motoring offences and so on. They cannot collect consumer debts such as credit cards, mortgages, loans or catalogue balances. At any one time, there are around 250,000 warrants for unpaid priority debt.
How do bailiffs and bailiff firms make their money?
Suppose Our Graham owes £350 in council tax arrears via a magistrates’ court liability order. We will assume that this £350 includes the magistrates’ court fee.
The council have a contract with a bailiff company. They book the case and charge the council a £50 booking fee on allocation.
Our Graham now owes £400.
Once it’s booked, they send a letter to Our Graham (Green Light Notification letter). They charge Our Graham £24.50 for this. About 25% of people pay at this stage.
The second letter (Amber Light Notification letter) is sent two to four weeks after this. They charge Our Graham another £18 for this. The Amber Light letter says something along the lines of “We are now allocating a field bailiff. If you don’t pay there are removal fees and we may attend with police and locksmiths to force entry.” About 25% of people pay at this stage.
The bailiff firm can sit on the money until the debt is paid in full, PIF in bailiff lingo. The bailiff firm has to remit PIFs within seven days back to the council.
Supposing 14 days passes. The bailiff firm has, say, 100 self-employed
(commission-only) bailiffs in that borough. Each individual bailiff typically
has 100 cases open at the ‘Green Light’ stage. The individual
bailiff is supplied details of allocation date, name, amount, address, etc.
He then sifts through them in postcode order and invariably makes different
piles according to age of warrant. He goes for the most recent cases first
because he has a greater chance of success - older warrants carry less chance
of collection success because people move away, etc.
The bailiff then goes out and delivers a hand-written and signed letter
along the lines of: “Notice of Seizure - I am attending your property
to remove goods” and writes his name and telephone number so that Our Graham can pay £350 + £50 + £24.50 + £18.
Our Graham now owes £443.
At 5am, the bailiff goes out with 30 warrants, targeting 3 collections a day from his list of 30.
Our Graham is the first case on the first pile and the first visit for the bailiff.
The bailiff sees Our Graham’s car in the drive and confirms with the DVLA that its number plate is registered to Our Graham. He therefore confirms the warrant and can now clamp the car legally.
In law, the bailiff should go to the door, knock, introduce himself and ask for payment in full at £443. But in practice, the bailiff may just clamp the vehicle.
He then ‘levies up.’ He attaches an immobilisation fee of, say, £128.
Now Our Graham owes £571.
Within the council-bailiff firm contract, it was agreed that the bailiff may charge “reasonable” costs for his petrol, time and vehicle = Attendance to Remove (ATR) fee of £175.
Now Our Graham owes £746.
The bailiff fills out a levy “I have today seized your goods” and charges a further, say, £54.
Our Graham now owes £800. It was £400 twenty minutes ago!
The individual bailiff earns 60% of the extra above £400. In this case, it’s £800 - £400 x 60% = £240. That £240 was made purely commission-only and by tacking on charges. Hence, there are no incentives for the individual bailiff to just collect the original £400 as he would actually earn no money as he is not on a fixed salary.
If Our Graham had paid the bailiff firm online or over the phone before the individual bailiff turned up, the bailiff would earn zero. The bailiff only gets commission on what he earns and can only earn by increasing the fees to Our Graham.
He may even try to charge another £200 for a recovery truck, which will be available at a few minutes notice.
Now Our Graham owes £1,000.
The car is taken to the pound, where Our Graham incurs storage fees of £24 a day and then risks being sold sooner or later. Once the car is in the pound, it is almost impossible to get it out as invariably the council will always side with the bailiff. (The police, too, even though they say they are only there to keep the peace, in real life can easily be tricked by the bailiff to attend and inadvertently assist him to gain entry.)
Our job is NOT to stop the bailiff - after all, Our Graham was quite legally tried in court, written to and had his green and amber letters. By law, he should pay the £400.
Our job is to mediate with the bailiff companies so that they get the original £400 and can write the case down as ‘paid in full’ and swiftly move onto another case.
1. Our Graham is happy - he gets unclamped and does not incur unnecessary
costs.
2. The bailiff firm is happy – they get the original £400 and
can have more cases from the council.
3. The council is happy – they received their £350 arrears.
Only the individual bailiff made no money. (Poor guy. Maybe he should look for a different job?)
Why is illegal over-charging allowed to continue?
Essentially, the industry is not very well regulated and is money influenced. Whilst councils do not like receiving the complaints bailiff companies inevitably generate, as soon as they see the money bailiffs bring in using the unscrupulous tactics mentioned above, they’re most willing to turn a blind eye. And of course the bailiff company wines and dines them, takes them to their corporate box at the rugby / football / horse racing / cricket / lap dancing club etc and generally encourages them to let the friendly bailiff company (purporting to perform a valuable public service) to look after things.
Even though many council workers are ‘not allowed’ to receive corporate hospitality, they disguise them as ‘financial update meetings with the bailiff company’ from the powers-that-be whilst they go on a nice little jolly. That way, when the contract is up for renewal, they award it to the same company again - and that’s why there are very few changes in the bailiff firms councils use from year to year, despite the number of complaints made against that bailiff firm.
So if the bailiff is demanding huge fees from you call John Galt on 0203 509 9007 or 07542 040 796 to get immediate help.
