‘Pay up, or it trebles’: bailiffs accused of strong-arm tactics in UK

theguardian.com:

Dr Naomi Spiers was sleeping off a night shift when there was a loud bang on the door. She curled up under the covers but the knocking wouldn’t stop.

When she answered, her visitor – wearing a face mask and bulletproof vest – demanded £425. He held out a card machine for her to pay. “I was like, ‘What the hell?’ He said, ‘Is that your car? I’ve put a clamp on it.’”

Spiers’s original offence was late payment of a £2.50 toll charge. Working night shifts in A&E, she says she had missed the payment deadline of midnight the following day, and the debt had been passed to a private enforcement firm.

She asked if she could arrange a payment plan, but claims the bailiff insisted she pay on the spot. “He said, ‘You’ve only a few minutes until the tow truck comes, and then it’s going to be another £800,’” said Spiers. The company disputes her account.

She needed her car to get to work that night, so she paid the £425. “I felt so put upon, and the only way I could make him go away was to pay. It felt like bullyboy tactics,” she said. “When he left, I was unbelievably angry and shaken. It was like, ‘Pay pay pay pay pay, otherwise it’s going to treble’.”

The 36-year-old, from south-east London, is one of a growing number of Britons being visited by bailiffs, widely used by public sector bodies to recoup cash – sometimes for the most minor of violations. There are limits to the fees bailiffs can charge, but in extreme cases, the amount can be hundreds of pounds more than the original sum owed. In Spiers’s case, the bailiff claimed she had been sent several letters, including the original penalty charge notice and subsequent enforcement reminders. But Spiers says she received only one letter and that it was backdated. She tried to pay the