Back in March 2009 I added a free listing for my business on the eventdomain.co.uk website – “Web Directory for the Conference, Hospitality and Event industry”. Almost three years later these scammers are pursuing my company for an alleged debt for advertising on their site. I’m not the sort of person to be taken in by scams like this, so they won’t be getting a penny from us. Hopefully anybody else who’s being harassed for non-existent debts by this shower of conmen will find this article and be armed with the information they need to avoid being harassed into paying up.

At the time we registered on their site it displayed a clickable ad: “Add your company for FREE – Register Today”. Clicking the ad led to another page containing the following text:

Standard Listing

Drive targeted Event-sector visitors to your business

A standard entry with Eventdomain gets you the following:

It provides the first stage in advertising and gives you basic internet presence
It’s a low cost way for you to be found
It will help in ranking you in the search engines

It also mentions an enhanced ‘Sponsored Listing’ at a cost of £40 for 13 months.

Being a cheapskate and not being the sort of person who would ever pay to advertise on some tinpot directory site with a very limited presence I entered our details for the Standard Listing. I received the following email from them (links disabled deliberately) on 08/04/2009:

“Advertise on event industry’s number one site

Your targeted advertising just got better. With hundreds of categories featuring business-to-business suppliers to the Event industry, EventDomain is the website of the event and hospitality industry. The site – at www.eventdomain.co.uk -  features categories such as Catering Equipment, Clothing, Photography, Graphics & Signs, Gifts & Incentives and Venues.  Infact, we have 6000 businesses who use our services.

EventDomain is a true one-stop shop for your industry. A Sponsored entry will put your company in front of thousands of event organisers looking for your product or service – whether it’s stand supplies or a marquee.

Take out a Sponsored entry and you’ll get full web stats, including clicks to your website, page views, and can view your stats in your own private area, called My EventDomain.

Testimonials:

“Seen your editorial in the Daily Mirror Biz Bureau section. Great website!”
Regards, Roger
www.societywine.com
More testimonials

A sponsored entry puts you above the standard listings, making you stand out and increases clickthrough by 50% – Guaranteed!    And EventDomain is highly specialised. It’s a site specifically created for people to find services just like yours.

Can you afford not to advertise on EventDomain? To book your slot, just go
online at http://www.eventdomain.co.uk/users.php?action=login -  just login as normal and click the Paypal button to pay.   Once your payment is accepted, your upgrade will activate at once – so there’s no worrying waiting times – just clean, clear target driven exposure.
Once done, your entry will be at the top of the search results, like this one:

http://www.eventdomain.co.uk/subcategory.php?subcat=1055

Advertising is even more crucial now, don’t make the mistake of reducing your ad spend, we can help a lot with our targeted exposure.  £40 for 12 months targeted exposure on Eventdomain is amazing, we just spent £3000 ourselves because we needed the customers – you do too.
Kind Regards
Chris Given
Director
www.eventdomain.co.uk

Obviously I ignored their kind offer – as I don’t pay to advertise on tinpot directory sites run by liars and criminals.

Liars and criminals? Well I think so – I certainly can’t find any record of an Eventdomain Ltd a Crystal Segments Group Ltd or anything similar at Companies House, nor any sign of a Chris (or Christopher) Given listed as a company director. Of course if the website and the emails contained the business disclosures required by law under the Companies Act 2006 and the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 then it might be easier to track down exactly what ‘company’ he’s claiming to be a director of. But I digress.

On 28/05/2009 I received another email:

Dear Client,

During this recession people are still buying untargeted advertising on websites, and others cancel working adverts, while many don’t buy at all – this is insane. Cutting advertising is preventing the flow of visitors to your website – resulting in fewer enquiries and sales.

The whole point of Eventdomain.co.uk is to make your company stand out, gone are the days of endless searching for unrelated websites – born is a vertical, targeted search and advert platform that guarantees results!

Benefits of Sponsored advertising with Eventdomain:

Put your company in front of thousands of Event Planners
You get full web stats
Free extra month on us (13 months for the price of 12)
Free weblink
Highly targeted/Specialist sector advertising

Online Advertising Attitudes Report found 56% of ABC1 adults go to specialist niche sites

Typical results for our clients (for 12 months basis) can be viewed here:

http://www.eventdomain.co.uk/blogs.php?id=25

Can you afford not to advertise on Eventdomain?

To get your sponsored listing, just Login to your MyEventdomain client area and press the PayPal button (located on the far right), then pay by credit/debit card to activate your listing for 13 months. You will recieve a reciept from Paypal on completion.

It’s only £40 and well worth it considering the targeted traffic we send.

Thanks for your time and for using Eventdomain.

Kind regards

Christopher Given

www.eventdomain.co.uk

So on 28/05/2009 I was offered the chance to take out a subscription for 13 months at a price of £40, paid up front by PayPal. I wasn’t interested, so I ignored it.
On 12/08/2009 I received a further email:

Dear Sir/Madam,

I’m just checking your listing and noticed your 1 month sponsored listing on Eventdomain.co.uk has now expired, and wondered if you wish to extend it for a full 12 months?

On renewal/extension, you get an extra month on us, so it’s 13 months for the price of 12, and your standard listing you still get for free.

Typical results for our clients can be viewed here:

http://www.eventdomain.co.uk/blogs.php?id=25

To renew your sponsored listing, just Login to your MyEventdomain client area and press the PayPal button (located on the far right), then pay by credit/debit card to activate your listing for 13 months. You will recieve a reciept from Paypal on completion.

It’s only £40 and well worth renewing considering the targeted traffic we send.

Thanks for your time and for using Eventdomain.

Kind regards

Christopher Given

This email confirms that my free 1 month sponsored listing has expired (some months earlier as it happens) and again offers me the chance of taking out a 13 month subscription for a sponsored listing at a cost of £40, paid up front by PayPal. It again confirms that “your standard listing you still get for free”. I again ignored the offer and forgot all about the ‘company’ and their website.

These emails are clear confirmation that no contract for services had existed between my business and whatever business is behind eventdomain. It further confirms that they were offering to do business with us in return for a prepayment of £40 for each 13 month period.

Over 2 years later, on 2nd November 2011, completely out of the blue, I received a letter from CDS – Clear Debt Solutions Ltd:

VERY IMPORTANT DO NOT IGNORE
Re: Crystal Segments T/a Event Domain
Amount Due: £195.00

I write to confirm that Clear Debt Solutions Ltd has been instructed by Crystal Segments T/a Event Domain to recover the above outstanding debt. Please could you contact Clear Debt Solutions Ltd on 0871 423 6088 as soon as possible.

Should you fail to contact us we will seek instructions from our client with regard to proceeding with further action against you. Such action could include the arrangement of one of our field agents to visit your property to discuss the situation or the formal commencement of legal proceedings.

Therefore, in the circumstances I urge you to take the opportunity to resolve this issue amicably by contacting Clear Debt Solutions Ltd on 0871 423 6088 and making an arrangement to pay the stated amount.

Yours faithfully,
Steven Wilkinson
Debt recovery Unit
Clear Debt Solutions Ltd

I was frankly astonished to receive this letter, having at this stage no recollection at all of any dealings with ‘Crystal Segments’ or ‘Event Domain’. A search of my archived emails for both names revealed nothing so I returned to the letter again to get the contact details for CDS (Clear Debt Solutions Ltd). I don’t like dealing with matters like this over the telephone, it’s far too easy for them to deny what’s been said and anyway they’d only provided a premium rate phone number on the letter – and with no indication of the cost of calling it at that, so I emailed them at the address given at the foot of the letter enquiries@cleardebtsolutions.co.uk:

Re: Crystal Segments T/a Event Domain
Case Reference: XXXXXX.XXX

Dear Sirs

I refer to your letter dated 20th October 2011 and received this morning.

We have no knowledge either of your client or of any outstanding debt due to them. We have certainly never received any invoice or request for payment from them as this would have been either settled within our usual 3 day turnaround or queried immediately.

Please provide copies of any contract which your client believes exists between us, details of when the contract was formed and who at our company authorised it, copies of any outstanding invoices and details of when and where they were sent and full details of any services or goods which your client may claim to have provided to us.

We are quite willing to settle any genuine outstanding debt without any further delay but I do not believe that any debt exists.

Any further communication from your company or from your client will be ignored unless it contains all the requested information.

Yours faithfully
etc.

I didn’t receive any response to my email but on 08/11/2011 I received an invoice for £150 from Eventdomain.co.uk dated 28/10/2011. Leaving aside the fact that the original letter claimed that an outstanding debt of £195 existed 8 days before the creation of this invoice there was still no evidence of any contract existing between us. The only ‘supporting documentation’ was a printout of a webpage at eventdomain.co.uk as it appeared at the time it was printed – 04/11/2011 – presumably intended to support their claim. And the webpage does indeed currently indicate that it costs £50 per year to advertise with them.

Now I had the name Eventdomain.co.uk I was able to find the emails I’ve reproduced above confirming that there had been no contract between us. I was also able to find screenshots of the actual wording of the site on the day I entered my details on it – confirming that the offer I had accepted was for inclusion of our details on this website at no cost.

I replied to both Eventdomain.co.uk (admin@eventdomain.co.uk) and CDS (enquiries@cleardebtsolutions.co.uk) on 08/11/2011:

Dear Sirs

I refer to recent requests for payment from Clear Debt Solutions Ltd and to your invoice XXXX, dated 28/10/11 and received today.

I include below my reply to Clear Debt Solutions. To quote myself: “Please provide copies of any contract which your client believes exists between us, details of when the contract was formed and who at our company authorised it, copies of any outstanding invoices and details of when and where they were sent and full details of any services or goods which your client may claim to have provided to us”. You have failed to supply any of the requested information except for an invoice dated after the letter received from CDS.

I appreciate that it will be difficult for you to provide this information as no contract exists or has ever existed between us. During the period you seem to be claiming that you supplied us with some sort of advertising service you had contacted us apparently inviting us to renew or extend some sort of trial period and requesting that we pay for this by Paypal. The fact that we neither made payment nor agreed to any type of renewal or extension of this trial, that you have waited over 3 years to request payment for a service we never asked for and that you only produced an invoice for this ‘service’ at our request would tend to suggest that this is some kind of a con designed to part unwary companies from their money.

If this is an attempted fraud then you’ve failed. If not then you’re incompetent. Now run along and waste somebody else’s time.

Yours faithfully
etc.

Again I received no response. I did however receive further harassing letters from Clear Debt Solutions Ltd (CDS) dated 02/11/2011, 11/11/2011 and 23/01/2012 demanding that I contact them on their premium rate telephone number. I ignored them.

On 01/02/2012 I received a call from 01772 333340, which turned out to be from CDS. I’d been monitoring calls from this number carefully in order to make a complaint about them – they’d rung repeatedly in October and November, each time ringing off after 2 rings. I was surprised then that somebody actually spoke when I answered the call. She gave her name as Lisa Smith and was an extremely ignorant and unpleasant person, apparently unable to discuss this matter sensibly without trying to talk over the top of me and adamant that they had ‘checked with Trading Standards’, who had apparently confirmed that we had entered into a contract with this eventdomain ‘business’. From what I could work out (and she didn’t appear to understand the argument she was attempting to make herself, so she obviously couldn’t explain it to me) somebody at Trading Standards had agreed that it’s possible to form a contract by clicking a button on a website. She didn’t seem to be able to grasp that the mere fact that somebody could form a contract that way didn’t mean that I had formed a contract that way and that it was up to them to prove that I had formed such a contract by clicking a button (I hadn’t) and that I intended to form such a contract (I didn’t).

The essential elements of a contract are:

• Offer: This scam fails at the first point – the ‘offer’ was for a free service. Subsequent offers for paid services were ignored.
• Acceptance: As above.
• Consideration: No paid-for service was discussed or agreed to.
• Capacity: A ‘business’ with no contact or ownership details on its website is committing a criminal offence and doesn’t have the capacity to form binding contracts through that website.
• Intention: We did not wish to form a contract.

This ‘contract’ fails on all points.

At the time this ‘contract’ was alleged to have been formed the site contained no Terms and Conditions at all, no contact details and no indication that taking up their free offer would form the basis of a contract. The site has subsequently been changed and a Terms & Conditions page added. http://www.eventdomain.co.uk/terms-conditions-eventdomain/ I’ll reproduce it in full so that any A Level law students who come across this page can have a good laugh:

Terms & Conditions | EventDomain

Advertiser relationship with Eventdomain

1.1 Your use of Eventdomain search engine is a legal agreement between you and Eventdomain.co.uk, which is part of Crystal Segment Hospitality Media Group.

1.2 The terms form a legally binding contract for both users and advertisers and you are advised to read them.

Accepting the Terms & Conditions

2.1 To use Eventdomain, you must agree to the Terms.

2.2 You can accept the Terms by simply using the services. Advertisers that freely submit their company details and who benefit from Eventdomain are considered clients of Eventdomain.co.uk.

2.3 Trading Standards and BusinessLink.gov both agree:

Contracts that are formed via the internet are legally binding and enforceable providing that the following conditions are satisfied:

offer – one party must contract with the other

acceptance – the other party must expressly accept the offer

Acceptance of the offer of advertising on Eventdomain is proven by:

1. Creation of a username and password & confirmation of those details

2. Submitting via a security Captcha tool

3. Pressing a submit button to create an advertiser account

4. Creating a Listing within your account

You should note that there is no general requirement for contracts to be in writing or for the parties to actually sign a contract. (Source: Trading Standards & BusinessLink.gov website.)
?
?
Eventdomain Client Accounts

3.1 In order to advertise on our search engines, you will have to create an Advertiser account.

Account. For security purposes you must keep your username and password and email secure.

3.2 You agree that you are solely responsible for any activity under your account, this includes all usernames, passwords, company and website information and descriptions of products and services.

User & Advertiser Submissions/Listings/Adverts

4.1 You agree that your submissions and/or adverts are owned by you and is your responsibility to ensure they aren’t illegal or break any UK/Worldwide advertising laws.

4.2 You agree that Eventdomain is not responsible for the content of individual advertiser submissions.
4.3 You agree that you will not submit content of the following nature: Defamatory, abusive, pornographic material, threatening, harmful, libellous, infringement of copyright.

Eventdomain.co.uk shall not be liable for any third party claims or losses of any nature including, but not limited to: loss of profit, direct, indirect, special damages arising from third party use or inability to use this website.

4.4 Eventdomain sometimes uses debt recovery services. Under UK law, there is a statutory right to charge interest under the late payment legislation and this can be applied to outstanding debtors on an individual case for case basis.

“We will exercise our statutory right to claim interest (at 8 per cent over the Bank of England base rate) and compensation for debt recovery costs under the Late Payment Legislation Act 1998 if we are not paid according to our agreed terms.”
?
Intellectual Property

Eventdomain – 2011

The content, design and categories of this website are copyright of Eventdomain. Our website may not be copied, reproduced or downloaded.

It is forbidden to reproduce, alter, modify, or incorporate the content of this website in whole or in part, for use in other documents or in other websites.

2005 – 2011 © Eventdomain. Terms and Conditions apply.

So users are now apparently bound by a contract, the actual terms of which are entirely secret apparently, merely by entering their details on a website. Shouldn’t the actual terms of the contract appear somewhere in the Terms & Conditions maybe? Anyone would think that owner of this site was deliberately trying to trick people into unwittingly entering into contracts. Odd.

And now we come to “the owner of this site”. There are no ownership or contact details at all on the site, apart from misleading ones. The site’s owner is variously described as Crystal Segment Hospitality Media, Crystal Segment Hospitality Media Group, Eventdomain, eventdomain.co.uk, Crystal Segment, Crystal Segment Media and Chris Given.

Chris Given himself is variously described as MD of Crystal Segment Hospitality Media, MD of Eventdomain and just ‘Director’. He doesn’t appear to be any of those things.

The website’s registrant is given in their whois entry as Christopher Given, a UK Individual who alleges that he’s a “non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service”. Now that’s a breach of Nominet’s rules so I’m just about to report him for it. Done.

At the foot of each page of his site there’s a link to another site (Venuedomain.com) registered by him – I say a ‘link’ but in fact he’s so inept that the text ‘Venuedomain.com’ actually links to a non-site at venuedomain.co.uk. Well done.

The Whois for venuedomain.com site reads:

Christopher Given
14 Merten Rd
Romford
RM6 6EH
christophergiven@btconnect.com
07944150075

I’ve also found the number 02085976768 which seems to belong to him.

Now I don’t know exactly what’s going on here but I don’t appreciate people trying to scam me and I don’t appreciate being harassed by debt collection companies for non-existent debts. I’ve wasted far too much time on this already but I’m going to make sure that this scammer is brought out into the open and exposed for the low-life, scamming fool that he obviously is.

I’ve warned many times of the dangers of running businesses like this and it seems from anecdotal evidence that some companies are finally having to count the cost of paying their suppliers late.

With the soaring cost of fuel and the general slowdown in the economy it seems that some transport company owners have decided that it will be more profitable to cease their transport operations and concentrate on collecting the outstanding debts accumulated under the late payment legislation.

The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 (see http://www.payontime.co.uk for further information) gives businesses a statutory right to claim daily interest from other businesses for the late payment of commercial debt. In addition businesses have the right to a compensation payment of between £40 and £100 for each invoice which is paid later than agreed terms. If no terms are agreed then the terms default to the later of 30 days from the day the service is performed (for pre-agreed amounts) or 30 days from the date the cost is confirmed.

Both the interest and the compensation payments are chargeable on each invoice paid late, are payable on demand and are claimable up to six years after the date they become payable – i.e. up to six years after the payment becomes late. They are payable even after the initial debt has been paid in full.

Companies are potentially storing up a time bomb by paying their customers late. As an example, a courier company which carries out 5 local jobs per week for a customer over a 6 year period, each one of which is invoiced on a separate invoice and each one of which is paid late, could potentially issue a claim after 6 years for £62,400 against that one customer in late payment compensation charges alone.

If a company issues just 25 invoices each week which are paid late then after 6 years they have ‘earned’ over £300,000 in late payment compensation charges, assuming their customers are still trading. For a transport company earning minimal profits in the current financial climate this is a tempting alternative income stream.

Of course many companies are reluctant to claim late payment charges, but the debt exists whether they claim them at the time or not. What seems to be happening at the moment is that companies are looking back at debts that have been paid late in the past and if they’ve not traded with the customer for a while, or they don’t really care if they lose the customer’s business, they’re putting in their claims under the late payment legislation.

We’ve recently received a claim such as this from an ex-supplier for 3 invoices which he believed were paid late in early 2006. The supplier actually ceased trading a few months after the invoices were issued but being a sole trader the individual concerned has chosen to supplement his current income by milking the customers of his previous business.

In our case he was unsuccessful – we’d settled all the invoices with his factoring company on the day they were received; we assume that the factoring company (as they often seem to) had applied our payments to the wrong invoices or the wrong account. We were saved from having to pay £121.17 purely because we’d both paid the invoices on time AND kept a proper record of the date the invoices were received and the date the invoices were paid. In the latter respect we were helped because we only ever pay our suppliers by BACS or online banking and always keep a proper record of the date the payment leaves our account.

I would suggest that anyone wishing to protect themselves against future claims under the late payment legislation takes the following steps:

1. Keep a record of all debts as they are incurred. Using a Purchase Order system will help achieve this but it’s not essential. When you receive goods or services from your supplier make a note of the date, the supplier’s name and the amount due and check off each invoice received against your list at the time of receipt. If you’ve not received an invoice within a couple of weeks of receiving the goods or service then contact the supplier to chase the invoice – fax or email is best because you can create an audit trail of having requested the invoice.
2. Record any invoices as they’re received. Date stamp every received invoice and check it off against your list of due invoices.
3. Pay the invoice within the agreed terms. If you didn’t agree terms at the time you ordered the goods/services then check if you were expected to have read and agreed to the suppliers standard terms before ordering. If no terms were agreed or specified by the supplier then pay the invoice within 30 days of either receiving the goods/services or the invoice date, whichever is earlier.
4. Notify supplier of queries or disputes. If the invoice is disputed or queried then inform the supplier at the earliest opportunity and keep a record of the date that the dispute/query was raised and the date of the response. If the dispute/query is resolved then pay within the original agreed term (or 30 days if no agreement) or within  a reasonable time (say 7 working days) of the resolution of the dispute. Keep a full record of all relevant actions, the date, time and the people involved.
5. Pay your suppliers by BACS or online banking. It’s easier to prove that the payment left you account on the right day than it is to prove that you didn’t  date all your cheques 3 weeks before you sent them. We save a screenprint of every online banking payment so that we can quickly check when payments were made without contacting the bank for confirmation. The screenprint doubles as a Remittance Advice for sending to our suppliers by email.
6. Agree payment terms in advance. If there’s an ‘understanding’ with your supplier that you will pay on terms other than 30 days from service (or 30 days from invoice) then ask your supplier to agree to the terms in writing before any work is carried out. Stick to the terms that you’ve agreed.

All this is a lot harder to write down than it is to do. It takes no real investment in time other than the initial planning of your system. Your list of invoices you’re due to receive should already be available in your booking or accounting system. If not then a simple list in Excel (or even in a notepad) of every purchase you make, will be a useful source of information for your business in any case. We run just such a list in Excel, revenue and cost recorded for each job, and the supplier’s and customer’s name. We can see profitability of a day by day basis, see which suppliers haven’t invoiced us and easily see which customers produce the most profit for us.

On a closing note, it should be noted that these late payment charges are assignable. Even if your mate Joe’s business doesn’t charge you when you pay late, the subsequent owners, or liquidators, of the business may chase you for late payment charges.

If it’s not happened already it seems only a matter of time before companies are set up to buy the rights to accrued late interest charges from failing businesses. When this happens there will undoubtedly be a lot of businesses whose bad payment record will come back to bite them.

You may be interested in this page, giving the specifics of a claim for late payment charges that we made against an ex-customer.

The ex-customer engaged a top firm of solicitors to avoid paying the claim, presumably at condiderable cost, but ended up paying our original claim plus court costs anyway.

I’m very confident that we would have won the case no matter what, but the notice about late payment charges on each of our invoices avoided us having to go to the trouble of actually proving the case in court.

www.payontime.co.uk/doctor/doctor_main.html

The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 gives you the right to claim interest and compensation for late payments.

This is a statutory right – your customer doesn’t have to agree to it, you don’t have to inform them in advance that you intend to charge them if they pay late and you are not permitted to agree in advance to waive late payment fees unless a suitable alternative form of late payment penalty is agreed.

For invoices up to £999.99 you can charge £40 PER LATE INVOICE. For invoices of between £1,000.00 and £9,999.99 you can charge £70 PER INVOICE. You can also charge interest on a daily basis, currently at a rate of 13% per annum.

You don’t charge VAT on the late payment or the interest and you don’t charge the late payment fee on a recurring basis.

You don’t HAVE to charge the late payment fee but unless you’ve specifically agreed to waive the fee the late payer still owes it to you EVEN AFTER THEY’VE PAID THE ORIGINAL DEBT. The late payment fee is like any other debt – you have up to 6 years to recover it from the late payer and remember that it’s chargeable on EVERY payment received late over that period.

You may find that it’s best to use the threat of the late payment legislation as a tool to get late payers to pay up. For example, our standard collection letter includes:

“As you may be aware, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 we have a statutory right to charge interest on overdue payments. The current rate of interest is 13%. We also have a statutory right to charge compensation of between £40 and £100 towards our collection costs. You will notice that your statement includes an invoice for the late payment charges. IF WE RECEIVE PAYMENT OF ALL OTHER OUTSTANDING INVOICES WITHIN 7 DAYS OF THIS LETTER WE WILL NOT PERSUE THESE CHARGES.”

This at least gives the customer the chance to pay up straight away and avoid the extra charges. It’s worth mentioning that if you use this approach and they do pay up within the 7 days then you’ve lost your right to go back within 6 years and claim the late payment charges.

Thomas Higgins solicitors will do the whole thing for you for a small fee. Direct Route are often recommended for business to business debt collection but I’ve heard several reports that they seem unwilling to collect late payment charges.

The system, known as VIPER, involves weight sensors actually embedded within the road surface (known as WIMS – Weigh-In Motion System) which measure the weight of each axle going over them to within 5% accuracy. The vehicle details are checked using ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) and the VOSA operative in front of his computer immediately takes the decision whether to request that the vehicle’s stopped and brought in for accurate weighing at the VOSA weighbridge.

During the trials of the system from June 2004 to December 2005 VOSA reported a 700% improvement in the accuracy of their vehicle stops for suspected overloading. Out of 434 vehicles identified by the system as being overweight, 379 were found to be actually overweight. Since the trials they have improved on their operating procedures and now report an almost 100% record in stopping overloaded vehicles.

There are apparently already 14 of these VIPER sites in use throughout the country and there are plans to introduce many more. Other than there being one on the M6 at Birmingham and the fact that VOSA have stated that there will be a “particular focus on port traffic” there seem to be few clues to exactly where these sites are located.

The bad news for couriers and other van drivers is that VOSA are actively targeting enforcement on light commercial vehicles because overloading is so common, particularly in the 3,500kg GVW range – overloaded Sprinter vans in other words.

So what can you do to avoid being caught breaking the law?

• Know exactly what weight your van can carry. Take your fully fuelled van, along with your maps, sack truck, ropes, straps and all the paraphernalia you carry, along to your local weighbridge and have it weighed (with you in it). Subtract that weight from the GVW of your van and the result is the weight you can legally carry.

• Know how heavy your load is. Don’t just take the customer’s word for it – if they’re wrong it will be you that’s prosecuted, not them. Many customers will give you the weight of the product rather than the weight of the product including containers and pallets. If you think you may be overloaded then drive to the nearest weighbridge to check your weight – you can’t be prosecuted for being overloaded if you’re on the way to the nearest weighbridge.

• Distribute your load evenly. You can be prosecuted for overloading individual axles as well as for being over your maximum allowed weight. Adjust your load so that the van sits evenly. If you’re driving along with the nose of the van pointing into the air then you probably need to shift some weight forward.

• Consider some sort of on-board weighing equipment – http://www.axtec.co.uk/On-board.htm for example, there are many other manufacturers.

The GB Domestic Drivers’ Hours Rules apply to all drivers of goods vehicles, however small, driven in Great Britain (Northern Ireland has its own rules) in connection with a business, where EU drivers’ hours rules (tacho regulations) don’t apply.

The rules are quite straightforward. In any day (defined as 24 hours from the start of duty) you’re allowed to drive for a maximum of 10 hours. Driving is defined as being at the controls of a vehicle for the purposes of controlling its movement, whether it is moving or stationary with the engine running.

The total amount of time that you’re allowed to be ‘on duty’ for the same 24 hour period is 11 hours.

For an employed driver, including directors of limited companies, ‘on duty’ means any working time, including sweeping the yard, answering the phone, loading and unloading etc.

For a self-employed driver ‘on duty’ means driving the vehicle or carrying out any other work in connection with the vehicle or its load. Answering the phone or sweeping the yard would not be duty time, cleaning the van or loading it up would be.

If you drive for less than 4 hours in a day there are no restrictions on duty time – you could legally work in the warehouse for 10 hours and then drive for up to 4 hours.

There are exemptions to the duty time BUT NOT THE DRIVING TIME for certain trades, but same day courier work wouldn’t fall into any of the exemptions.

If you only ever drive vehicles that are under 3,500kg GVW there is no legal requirement to keep records of your working or driving hours.

• You can drive for up to 10 hours per day, breaks aren’t included in the 10 hours, nor is loading and unloading or waiting time with the engine switched off.
• You can ‘work’ for up to 11 hours per day, breaks aren’t included but all other work is included (unless you’re self-employed when some work doesn’t count).
• The ‘day’ lasts for 24 hours from the time you start work. So if you start at 10.00am today and work for 11 hours then you can’t do any more work until 10.00am tomorrow.
• There are no record keeping requirements for drivers of vans under 3,500kg.
• There is a requirement under the Working Time Directive and Health & Safety laws for drivers to have adequate rest.

The rules are enforced by VOSA, but except for in cases where tiredness has actually caused an accident I’ve never actually heard of anyone being prosecuted for being ‘over hours’ in a vehicle without a tacho or driving hours log. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, just that I’ve never heard of it.

In the case of an employee who causes an accident while exceeding their daily driving or duty time their employer would almost certainly be held liable for the accident. A death caused by an employee under these circumstances could leave the employer facing a charge of Corporate Manslaughter.

It should also be noted that both VOSA and the Police can go to extraordinary lengths to establish exactly how long a driver has been working, particularly following a serious accident. Mobile phone records can easily be checked to pinpoint the users whereabouts to within a few hundred metres, your own GPS tracking logs can provide even more conclusive evidence, fuel receipts can be examined and the time of fuel-card and credit-card purchases can be traced. Even a POD for a 500 mile round trip same day delivery may be enough to incriminate you.

VOSA are already using ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition), in conjunction with axle weight sensors embedded in the road, to identify overloaded vehicles. I believe that it’s only a matter of time before they use it to detect drivers’ hours offences as well.

In 2006 a 45-year-old Toyota employee died, apparently from working less than 20 hours overtime per week in the run up to launching a new product.

His death has now been classed as an industrial injury, meaning that his family can claim against his employers’ insurances.

60 hours per week is classed as a short week by many in the UK same day courier industry. While HGV drivers are limited by law to 48 hours work a week and any employed workers can insist on working a maximum of 48 hours per week with 5 weeks holiday per year, many courier owner-drivers and courier company owner-managers work in excess of 70 hours per week with few if any holidays.

For the working man, doing his best to provide for his family, is it not better to have a few more years to spend with the family, rather than a few extra quid each year and an early death? Life is apparently a journey, not a destination.

(Written by me, working at 1837 on a Saturday evening)

Does the RTD apply?

The RTD applies only to mobile workers who work in vehicles to which EU drivers’ hours rules apply – that is vehicles with a tachograph fitted. THIS WILL INCLUDE MOST DRIVERS OF TRANSIT OR SPRINTER VANS USED TO TOW TRAILERS.

‘Working in’ would include driving, shunting, navigating, training, loading etc and would include driver’s mates.

It applies to some self-employed drivers under limited circumstances but looks set to include all self-employed drivers (of vehicles with tachos) from March 2009.

Workers who only occasionally drive or work in vehicles to which EU drivers’ hours rules apply are still subject to the RTD even when not driving if they work in vehicles with tachos for 11 days or more during a reference period that is shorter than 26 weeks or 16 days or more where the reference period is 26 weeks or longer.

For example a warehouseman who takes a 7.5 tonner out to refuel it now and again would be covered by the RTD during all his working time if he drove the 7.5 on 11 separate days during the reference period, even if it was for just ten minutes each time.

A worker who is covered by the RTD because of work carried out for one employer would also be covered by the RTD if he carries out any other work for other employers – weekend work for example.

A mobile worker who isn’t covered by the RTD is still covered by the Working Time Directive (WTD)

What does the WTD mean to couriers?

The Working Time Directive does not apply to the self-employed. Unlike the RTD (see above) there are no firm plans to broaden its scope to include self-employed workers.

The rights that the WTD gives to mobile workers not covered by the RTD are:

An average 48 hour working week over (usually) a 17 week period. Workers can choose to opt out of the 48 hour maximum working week but the opt out must be voluntary and in writing and they can cancel their opt out at short notice.

Adequate rest, both daily and weekly – but unspecified. ‘Adequate rest’ means that workers have regular rest periods.  These should be sufficiently long and continuous to ensure that workers do not injure themselves, fellow workers or others and that they do not damage their health, either in the short term or in the longer term.

Free health assesments for night workers. This must be offered to all workers before they start regularly working at night time – which is defined as: at least three hours between 11pm and 6am or (by agreement with your workers) at least 3 hours during any 7 hour period which includes the period between Midnight and 5 am. Free health assessments must be offered on a regular basis, usually once a year or more.

A minimum of 4.8 weeks per year paid holiday per year (increases to 5.6 weeks on 1st April 2009). The employer is free (within reason) to specify the dates when the holidays can be taken and Bank Holidays are included in the minimum entitlement.

These are the minimum entitlements, employers are of course entitled to offer their employees better terms.

Further reading:

WTD Guidance

RTD Guidance

CMR stands for “Convention relative au contrat de transport international de marchandises par route” which translates as “Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road”. It was devised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and was brought into UK law by the Carriage of Goods by Road Act 1965.

When does CMR apply?

It applies to every contract for the carriage of goods by road in vehicles for reward, when the place of taking over of the goods and the place designated for delivery, as specified in the contract, are situated in two different countries, of which at least one is a contracting party to CMR.

The current contracting countries are: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan.

It doesn’t apply:

(a) To movements between the United Kingdom, The Republic of Ireland, The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man;
(b) To carriage performed under the terms of any international postal convention;
(c) To funeral consignments;
(d) To furniture removal;
(e) To movement of your own goods.

What does it mean to me as a same day courier?

Surprisingly enough, given all the fuss that people make over it, it means very little to you. It simply provides a standardised set of Conditions, which you’re not permitted to contract out of, which replace your own Terms & Conditions (if any) when carrying out deliveries to which CMR applies.

The two main issues that concern same day couriers are paperwork and the issue of insuring for liability under CMR.

What about Liability and ‘CMR Insurance’

Under CMR your liability for loss or damage to a load is strictly limited to 8.33 SDRs (Standard Drawing Rights) per kilo, unless you’ve chosen to offer your customer a higher level of liability. That’s currently (11th July 2008) equal to £6.87 per kilo of damaged, lost or stolen goods, or the actual value – whichever is lower. While that’s a higher rate than standard FTA or RHA limits of liability (£1.30/kg) it’s still less than that offered by most couriers’ standard Terms & Conditions.

Despite what you may have been told ‘CMR Insurance’ is NOT compulsory by law, in fact there’s no such thing as CMR Insurance – it’s just Goods In Transit insurance that meets your liabilities under CMR. Since your liabilities under CMR are usually more limited than your liabilities under UK Common Law, or most couriers’ Terms & Conditions, then this issue of ‘CMR Insurance’ shouldn’t really exist for same day couriers; it’s only the ‘Territorial Limits’ of standard GIT cover that make it an issue.

Of course if you’re carrying out work for another transport company then they’ll probably consider that you have to have ‘CMR Insurance’ in order to protect their interests. You may also feel that your chances of theft or damage to your load are increased when travelling abroad, particularly during the often unavoidable overnight stops.

Paperwork – the ‘CMR Note’

Again, despite what you may have been told, it’s not compulsory to have a ‘CMR Note’ of the ‘standard’ design in a 4 part NCR set etc. However, the law does stipulate that certain details must appear on the consignment note and that observations & remarks should be entered in the appropriate places.

Given that foreign officials (and the consignee) will be more familiar with the standard design of CMR note it would probably be foolish not use it.

A downloadable 4 part CMR Note from the IRU Website is available through the link here http://www.deliver-it.biz/couriers/useful-sites-and-tools/ and guidance on completion is available at http://www.iru.org/index/en_services_cmr – although you’ll need to register to access it.

The full text of CMR is available at http://www.unece.org/trans/conventn/cmr_e.pdf and the Carriage of Goods by Road Act 1965 which enacts it in UK law is available at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1965/cukpga_19650037_en_1

Unless you only ever carry goods under your own ‘Terms and Conditions’ or ‘Conditions of Carriage’, which you make available to your customers before you carry out any work for them then you could be wide open to a claim for unlimited damages from your customer or even from your customer’s customer.

Your Goods In Transit insurance might well cover you for £15,000, but what if the goods you’ve collected are worth far more than that? A consignment of computer chips or a pharmaceutical sample can be worth many times that and if it was lost, stolen or damaged while under your control you would be liable for the full value unless your Conditions limit your liability.

That’s not the worst of it though. Most couriers’ Conditions quite rightly disclaim any liability for consequential loss. Without this essential restriction to your liability your losses are potentially unlimited should a late, lost or damaged consignment cause your customer any financial loss due to your ‘negligent act’. A ‘negligent act’ could be as simple as you leaving goods in your vehicle overnight and them being stolen, being late for a delivery because your cambelt broke due to being overdue for replacement, subcontracting your delivery to a muppet or just sending a document by overnight delivery and it being misrouted.

In the absence of suitable Conditions the only defence that you may have against a claim is to be able to prove that your customer’s loss occurred through no negligence whatsoever on the part of you, your employees or your subcontractors. In practice this may mean a delay or loss caused by an ‘act of God’ (exceptionally severe and unexpected bad weather for example) or a catastrophic and entirely unpredictable delay on the motorway system  – for example if you collect something the day before for 0900 delivery to London then a 1 hour delay on the motorway at Luton would not excuse a late delivery because it should be anticipated. If the motorway was closed for 4 hours because of an accident then it may be a delay that you could show that you were not able to anticipate.

What does ‘consequential loss’ mean and isn’t it already covered by your Goods in Transit Policy? Consequential loss applies not to the value of the goods that you’re carrying but to the financial loss that may be suffered should they not be delivered according to the customer’s requirements. By way of example, imagine a simple job where you collect an envelope from your customer for delivery across town within 2 hours. You leave the envelope on your dashboard and it blows out of the window without you noticing and it’s lost forever.

With proper Conditions you may be liable for around £15 for the loss of the paper and the envelope and you probably won’t be able to charge your customer for the delivery. Without any Conditions your moment of inattention could mean that the multi-million pound property deal that your client was about to seal with the contract that you were carrying doesn’t go ahead and YOU are legally liable for their entire financial loss. You’re a sole trader – so if they claim their losses you lose everything, all your savings and all your possessions.

Maybe that scenario seems a bit far-fetched, so how about that custom-made machine part that you’ve just collected from a freight forwarder for delivery to a manufacturer? The production line’s been down for 3 days at a cost of £20,000 per hour. You ‘thought’ that you’d strapped the pallet down properly but you take a corner too fast, the pallet slides and damages the goods. That’s say £40,000 for the damage to the machine part (only £15,000 covered on your insurance) and a further 3 days at £20,000 per hour (a further £1.44 MILLION in costs) for the stopped line while a new part is manufactured and delivered.

Without proper Conditions you are liable for losses like these. The good news is that it’s very simple to avoid the risk of being held liable for this type of claim. If you’re a CX member you have the benefit of being able to use their “Model Terms and Conditions”. If you’re not a CX member then the FTA allows use of their “Model Conditions of Carriage” by non-members as long as their copyright is acknowledged.

In my (non legally trained) opinion, neither sets of Conditions are entirely appropriate to the same day courier industry, but as a stop-gap measure they are better than no conditions at all. I hope to be able to point you towards some more appropriate Conditions in the near future.

In the meantime your main challenge may be to ensure that you can show that your customers have had the opportunity to view whatever conditions you may have before entering into a contract with you. If there’s a clear link on every page of your website and you’ve confirmed that your new customer has visited your website then you should be on fairly firm ground. If you’ve already carried out a job for someone without giving them the opportunity of viewing your Conditions then you can protect yourself in the future by simply adding a notice to the first invoice that all future work carried out will be subject to your Conditions. It doesn’t protect you from liabilities incurred during the first job but if you draw their attention to your Conditions at every available opportunity then you should hopefully be protected against future claims.

The Driver CPC is in no way connected with the Operator’s CPC required by Transport Managers etc to become an O Licence holder.

This is guidance for the Driver CPC as it applies to GOODS VEHICLE DRIVERS ONLY. The rules for PCV drivers will be implemented on earlier dates.

The requirement to hold a valid Driver CPC will eventually apply to all drivers of goods vehicles over 3500 kg GVW – so all drivers driving vehicles that require C1, C1+E, C or C+E licences.

All new drivers passing their tests to driver vehicles over 3500 kg after 10th September 2009 will have to obtain an initial Driver CPC qualification in addition to passing the appropriate driving test. The Driver CPC will need to be renewed every 5 years by completing a 35 hour course.

Drivers who have already have C1, C1+E, C or C+E licences before 10th September 2009 will not have to obtain an initial Driver CPC qualification but will still have to undertake 35 hours of training to renew their periodic Driver CPC by September 2014 and every 5 years after that.

Drivers of vehicles driven under B+E licences (van and trailer combinations) do not require a Driver CPC irrespective of the Gross Train Weight

Did you get any written confirmation of your booking? If it didn’t have the full company details on it then you should have a good case for making the sender personably liable anyway.

If you maybe know a large customer of theirs that’s likely to owe them a lot of money you could get a third party debt order and claim your money direct from their customer.

Your best bet’s to get some proper legal advice.

I think you’ve got your answer right there then. Unless (and I’m not actually suggesting that you would do this) you and the subcontractor mutually decided to ‘turn a blind eye’ to the fact that he would be a few kg over, or if you misled the subcontractor about the weight, then it’s entirely his fault and the costs are legally and morally his responsibility.
 

Are you sure it wasn’t a limited company though? You said that one of them was sacked as director and partnerships don’t have directors.
From the Business Link website

Sole Traders/Partnerships
4.1 You are personally liable for all your business debts.
• There is no limit to the extent of your liability. If you cannot pay off your business debts, you can be made bankrupt.
• In a partnership, each partner is liable ‘jointly and severally’ for all the business debts of the partnership. This means that, if the business fails, you could end up having to pay your partners’ share of the debts, as well as your own. But for income tax purposes each partner is only liable for their own share of the profits.
4.2 You personally own the assets of the business.
4.6 You can limit your liability in a partnership by setting up a limited liability partnership.
• This is a corporate body with its own legal identity and capacity.
• It has the organisational flexibility of a partnership.
• It offers limited liability to members.
• It must be registered at Companies House.
• Annual accounts must be prepared and filed. There are other filing requirements, similar to those for the limited company which have time limits for compliance.
• The partnership agreement is confidential to members.
• Withdrawals may be clawed back, if the partnership is declared insolvent within the next two years.
• If you are a member of a trade association, check to see whether it has any conditions which may apply to your registration as an LLP.
• Being a member of an LLP can minimise NI contributions

In the case of death caused by a driver working those hours the company and its management face prosecution for Corporate Manslaughter.