#20: Clamping

This is quite a long story, but I’m in the mood for exercising my writing fingers.

My best friend Matt lives in Baldock, which is a small town about 6 miles away from Hitchin, where I live. He moved into a one-bedroom flat at the end of last year with his long-term girlfriend Jo. Parking is fairly tight in Baldock as it’s a fairly old town which has had to expand to cope with the amount of cars there are on modern roads, and as such it is quite difficult to find a space, much less one where you can leave your car for an extended period of time. For this reason, the landlord of the flats Matt lives employs a private wheel clamping company, who come and check the car park every so often for cars without passes and clamp them as a deterrent.

About two months ago, I went to visit Matt on a Saturday to drop some games off to him and have a quick chat. I parked my car in the loading bay outside the front door, and went into his flat to speak to him. When I came back out twenty minutes later, there was a big yellow clamp on the driver’s side front wheel of my car. It’s worth pointing out that this was March, and when he moved in last November, the landlord who owns the flats was “between clamping companies”, which meant that parking in the area went unchecked, and therefore to see a clamper actually around was something of a shock. I looked at the clamp in astonishment, and then walked past my car and out into the courtyard. I saw an unfamiliar-looking old white van, and a guy in tracksuit bottoms lying on the floor next to a Mazda MX-5, applying another clamp.

Me: “Hey, mate - why have you clamped my car?”
Him: “You don’t have a pass, mate”
Me: “I don’t need one - I was in the loading bay. I’ve only been here 20 minutes”
Him: “Well I’ve been here 10, and you were there when I came”
Me: “…so that would imply that I have actually been here more than 10 minutes then, possibly the 20 minutes I just said I had, then?”
Him: “Errrrrrr”

Suffice it to say, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Me: “So are you going to unclamp my car then?”
Him: “I can’t do that.”
Me: “Why not?”
Him: “I don’t have the key.”
Me: “Right. So how do people get unclamped, then?”
Him: “They pay the release fee. £105.75″

I laughed at him, and walked off. After a quick conversation with Matt, we decided that the best thing to do would be to ring the landlord, who had obviously not notified the clamping company that loading bays were present in the car park - they just assumed all spaces were the same, and “no pass equals clamp”. The landlord wasn’t answering the phone however, so I called the 0845 number on the large sticker that had been clumsily stuck on my car window. A guy who was quite clearly on his mobile phone answered, and even after I explained the situation, he informed me that the only way to get released was to pay the release fee, and then appeal against it if I thought that it was unjust. I laughed at him as well, and hung up the phone.

About an hour passed, and the clamper showed back up in his van. I grabbed the notice board from the foyer of the flats, which contains a parking plan and clearly marks the loading bays, and took it out to show him.

Me: *patronising tone* “Would you agree that this is a plan of this car park?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Would you agree that that blob there *points at paper* is clearly that building there *points at Matt’s block*?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Would you agree that this bay here, marked “LB” is the bay where my car, that silver Seat Ibiza with the clamp on, is parked?”
Him: “Yes, I would.”
Me: “OK. Would you agree that, according to the legend on this parking plan, LB means ‘loading bay’?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Right. So would you agree that my car is actually parked in a loading bay and not a regular parking space, and you have clamped it wrongly?”
Him: “Yes, I would.”
Me: “Would you care to explain why you won’t remove it then?”
Him: “Oh, I don’t have the authority to do that.”

This was unbelievable. Here I was, showing him concrete evidence that I was in the right and he was in the wrong, and yet he still wouldn’t take the clamp off. I explained that we’d tried to call the landlord but he wasn’t answering the phone, and his response was basically that I’d have to pay the £105 release fee if I wanted my car back.

At about 4pm (my car was originally clamped at around 12:30pm) I needed to go home to do things, and so I called the company and grumpily asked them to send round the guy who takes payment. Imagine my [sarcasm]total surprise[/sarcasm] when the same guy who clamped my car in the first place showed back up in his van. He produced a chip and PIN machine and took payment from me, gave me a receipt and a complaint form, and then pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the clamp. When I saw him pull out the keys, I laughed, and watched like a hawk while he removed the clamp to make sure he didn’t scuff my alloys.

That was pretty bad luck on my part, and I was rather annoyed at the situation. The story doesn’t stop there, though.

The landlord called Matt back on Monday. He said that he was sorry but he finished at 1 on Saturdays, and therefore he’d returned his call as soon as he got back to work. Matt explained the whole story to him, and said that as a resident, he was very displeased with the way the clampers went about their business. The landlord promised he would speak to the clampers and look into it. A couple of weeks later, he called Matt back to say that I was due a refund, and that I should speak to the clampers to sort it out. I called the company and they said that they’d agreed to pay half the money, while the landlord paid the other half. I said I didn’t care who paid provided I got every penny of my money back, because I shouldn’t have been charged it in the first place. I gave them my name and address and they said they’d send out a cheque once the director who signs the cheques got back from holiday.

I’ll cut the story down here because it’s getting a bit boring, but I called the clamping company nine times before I eventually got the cheque out of them. Every time I was told “oh it’s in the post”, “it’s been sent to you”, “oh for fuck’s sake it must have been lost in the post, I’ll get another one out to you”, “my director’s still on holiday”, “my director’s not been in yet” etc etc. Considering the usual attitude I have to being fed a load of bullshit, I was very restrained and only lost my temper with the guy on the other end of the phone once. The rest of the time I just made sure I was a persistent thorn in their side who wouldn’t go away.

Every time I called, I got the same guy, and he told me the same lies. The last time I called, I got someone different, who was apparently one of the directors, and the guy who signs the cheques. He told me that the cheque had been signed and “sent out to you yesterday”, and when I said that I didn’t believe him because I’d been told that before, he said that he’d signed the cheque personally and it had been sent, and there was nothing more to it. At that point, the guy I usually spoke to walked back into the office, and I heard the director say “I’ve got Mr. Luxton on the phone about his refund”. The usual guy replied “Oh yeah, that cheque you signed is on my desk”. At this point, I erupted into laughter at the fact that they had been so obviously caught out lying to me. In the end, they didn’t post the cheque at all - I suggested that if they had a guy going out to Matt’s area that day then they should drop it in his letterbox for me, and conveniently enough they had. Matt rang me that evening (last Friday, in fact) to confirm that there was a cheque payable to me sitting in his mailbox, for £105.75. Hallelujah.

I have written this post because I am simply overjoyed that they have finally paid me. I am still waiting for the cheque to clear, but I have cleared the majority of the hurdles. I can’t be the only one who thinks that it is total and utter bollocks that I’ve had to wait this long for a refund on money I should never have had to pay in the first place. They have claimed interest on my money for nearly two months as a result of this, and while that probably isn’t a massive amount of money, it’s the principle.

The name of the original clamper was Matthew Betts. The guy I spoke to in the office on all these occasions was called Danny. The company are called SIA Security Services, they are based in Bedford, and they are a complete and utter bunch of fucking wankers - you can quote me on that. It’s not libel because it’s true. I never want to see or hear from them again. Ever.