Marstongroup Avis 

I am currently trying to make a payment to 'Marston Recovery' on behalf of a vulnerable person with additional needs.

Now, you would think that a company whose entire business revolves around collecting money would make actually paying them a relatively straightforward process.

Apparently, that's asking a bit much.

The company's telephone system is an absolute shambles.

Both the dedicated payment line and the number inviting customers to "speak to one of our team" are constantly engaged.

I've now spent TWO HOURS yes, literally TWO HOURS trying to GIVE a debt recovery company MONEY.

You really couldn't make it up.

It does make me wonder whether Marston Recovery is so focused on maximising profits that investing in something as revolutionary as a functioning telephone system has slipped down the priority list.

Perhaps adequate staffing levels and sufficient phone capacity are considered extravagant luxuries in the debt recovery industry?

I appreciate that debt recovery isn't exactly a business where customers have the luxury of shopping around. After all, it's not as though someone receiving a demand for payment can simply leave a bad review and take their debt elsewhere.

And therein lies the problem.

What incentive is there to invest in customer service when the people you're dealing with have absolutely no choice but to deal with you?

More importantly, do the organisations employing Marston Recovery actually know what sort of service is being delivered on their behalf?

Do they carry out meaningful due diligence? Do they monitor accessibility, telephone waiting times and the treatment of vulnerable people? Or is the cheapest contract simply the most attractive one?

Because when someone is genuinely TRYING to settle a debt, particularly on behalf of a vulnerable individual, making it this difficult to pay is beyond ridiculous.

It's almost impressive.

A debt recovery company that apparently cannot provide a reliable means for people to pay their debts.

The irony is absolutely magnificent.

Perhaps Marston Recovery could explain how we're supposed to make a payment when neither the payment line nor the customer service number is accessible?

**Answers on a postcard, please.** Although, judging by the telephone system, I suspect the postcard might arrive quicker.

In the meantime, I'll continue with the apparently unreasonable task of trying to GIVE A DEBT COLLECTION COMPANY MONEY

You really couldn't make it up. Should I use a debt recovery company for the lose of my time.....If I was a millionaire I would take this company to task!!!

"Intimidating" and "assertive" by their own admission.

This has to be the most vile customer service that we as a family have experienced. I say as a family, because we were helping my student daughter out of a situation she found herself in, over a £70 parking fine.
Marstons were not willing to take a particular credit card, after a few links were sent to us to pay, we established that they were not going to accept a credit card for the outstanding debt of over £400 and were threatening us that we had until 3pm today to pay otherwise our daughters car was going to be located and clamped. This refusal of said credit card forced us to make a payment from our savings directly to their sort code etc. This all happened in the morning. Five minutes after we came off the phone from one of the agents, our daughter received a very threatening whatsapp message " Vehicle with registration ******* has been placed on the ANPR system where it can be located and clamped road side with the intention of removal to be sold at auction to satisfy the balance. Further charges may apply". Why did they feel the need to involve our daughter again when she had authorised for them to speak with her Dad initially? Just to threaten her.
This is truly shocking behaviour from a company. We were never refusing to pay, which they were always aware of.
Threatening to take a £15,000 car away from a young adult to pay for a parking ticket originally £70.00!!
There is no negotiation allowed with these bullies who call themselves Court Enforcement Officers. They buy the debt from the parking offices and play dirty games to get a huge sum back.
Utterly disgusting company!!!!!!! Rude and intimidating.

Bully boy tactics on my vulnerable daughter no flexibility and using legal language that the meat head was too thick to understand

Rude, and hung up on saying I dont want to deal with this anymore. I cant find anywhere to make a complaint. She was absoultely not willing to speak to me, I was very polite through the call, lady had an attitude, accused me of lying from what a previous employer had suggested to me, hence why I was ringing back, I wanted to speak to her to arrange a lower payment so I can keep making payments for a speeding fine, just kept saying no Im not accepting anything. I said so your not willing to take any money off me and she said no if its not the full amount in a very unpolite tone. Expressed Im not not paying I just want a lower installment as Im in between employment to be told Ive had enough of you Im not dealing with this anymore and put the phone down on me. I did ring back up and got a male member of staff who was much more helpful.

£600 for a parking ticket that I had no knowledge of... nice one.

What alarms me is the fact that the fines court actually uses the service of this company in the first place.

It’s as though the fines office makes it as difficult as possible to set up payment arrangements so they can pass your details onto this company.

I was trying to come to some arrangement to pay a fine for my son and finished up totally stressed.

I threaten to sue people who are out of order but it never gets to that stage because they start listening when I mean what I say.

I will be suing Marston and the fines office for gross negligence and I will win.

Watch this space.

I have read the poor reviews about this company and I totally agree with nearly all of them. (Fuel for the fire you might say).

To know that people like this are allowed to operate in the uk alarms me immensely and I will give them a piece of their own medicine when it comes to that point.

All I can say is that dirty, disgusting, scum like them deserve everything they get and let’s see how they like the same treatment.

This company is after payments that have alredy been paid

Pressure and aggresion is there buisness model

I really dont know how its still opperating in this day and age

The courts say i owe nothing

But they say i do and they will pass on to an enforcement agency that can break into my property

Discusting behavior

Costomer service on telephones discracefull!!!

I know the law dont let me catch you in my house.

My experience with Marston Recovery was extremely disappointing and distressing.

I accept that I was responsible for paying the outstanding parking charge. I had previously dealt with several parking tickets and genuinely believed I had cleared them all, but unfortunately one was missed and was passed to Marston Recovery. At the time, I was unemployed, struggling financially, and dealing with anxiety and depression. When I received a letter demanding over £300, I became overwhelmed and, because of my anxiety, I avoided dealing with it. I remembered the letter on the final day, but by then it was too late. I called the following morning and was told to call back on Monday at 8:00 a.m. because the agent I spoke to was off work.

Instead, at around 6:40 a.m. on Monday, I received a WhatsApp message instructing me to call as soon as possible to prevent further action and additional costs. During the phone call that followed, the agent was rude, dismissive, and unprofessional. Rather than listening to my situation, he repeatedly told me that enforcement agents were due at my property that day and that I "better start calling family and friends" to raise the £576 immediately.

I explained that I had just started a full-time job and would not receive my first pay until Friday, meaning I could settle the balance within a few days. I wasn't asking to avoid paying. I simply asked for a little understanding and a short amount of time. Instead, I felt intimidated and pressured. There was no attempt to discuss a reasonable solution or show any empathy.

I understand that debt recovery companies have a job to do, and I accept responsibility for the outstanding debt. However, there is a significant difference between enforcing a debt and making someone feel threatened. My experience left me shaking on my way to work, wondering how I was supposed to find £576 before 8:00 a.m. that same morning.

What disappointed me most was that I was willing to pay. I wasn't refusing to settle the debt. I simply needed a few days until I received my wages. Instead of being met with understanding or offered any flexibility, I felt that the only priority was obtaining payment immediately, regardless of my circumstances.

A more professional, respectful, and compassionate approach would have made an incredibly difficult situation much easier to deal with.

I have had 2 visits from "enforcement officers" as they describe themselves regarding a debt in the names of 2 people who I have never heard of & certainly never lived here.Ihave lived here since 1988 - I explained this to the first guy & he went away.This was a few weeks ago, yesterday a different man turned up - I went to the window as I never open the door to people I don't know.He kept insisting I come to the door which I refused.I explained that I had recently suffered identity theft & people had tried to hack my Apple account,I had to change all my passcodes & a fraudulent loan application to TSB & credit from House of Fraser had been attempted.This has all been reported & I said I guessed the 2 named people were part of this fraud.He then virtually accused me of lying & demanded ID.I told him he had no right to ask but I did show a hospital letter & a credit card bill in my name.He himself showed no ID & muttered he was from "Marston recovery" once.I had to replay the ring doorbell footage 3 times to make out the name.Eventually he left but he was very aggressive & I felt threatened.I was literally shaking after he left.I am not usually rattled by this sort of thing but it was a very unpleasant experience.I just hope he doesn't return.I am not keen to contact the company direct as I don't wish to engage with them at all.Very unpleasant people, I am neither frail nor elderly but I imagine if I were it could have been a lot worse.I assumed his insistance that I come to the door was so he could barge his way in

Absolute thugs, how on Earth are they even allowed to operate in the UK. They threaten you over the phone. Don’t understand that the case is on HOLD for investigation. Their tactics are intimidation and extortion. Dealing with them is like those mafia debt collectors from the movies.

This company keep on sending me fake driving offence ..
once before I had to pay £550 also it’s not my offence but bailif came and try to take my car away so I had no choice .
Again and again they send me different offence I didn’t know even ..
this company must Investigate .. very poor quality people

I'd give no stars if I could. The man I spoke to this morning was very rude and unprofessional, I was being very civil and explained my situation, he wasn't helpful at all, he didn't care and was only bothered about getting money off me. He then hung up on me for no reason, no explanation, no nothing, just hung up. Very disturbing company as well because why would this company need to know my car registration? I will be putting in a formal complaint with how I was treated this morning. Absolutely disgusting of a company with heartless workers

Dreadful company running a complete scam. Moved house so missed a driving charge from two years earlier as sent to previous address. Miraculously a bailiff just happened to pass my car outside my new address and clamped it. Not given any option or time just told to pay or lose my car. Takes a lot of research to even find out who to complain to, then they say they can’t help. Absolutely shocking company. More needs to be done to regulate these people.

I had a really poor experience on a phone call with one of the advisors. They came across as very unprofessional, even laughing during the call. Shortly after that, they said they couldn’t hear me properly and then abruptly hung up.

I also felt pressured to make a lump sum payment, and there were comments made about potentially taking action regarding my PCP finance car, which was quite worrying. The whole conversation felt intimidating and unsupportive.

Overall, I’m very disappointed with how I was treated. I expected a basic level of professionalism and empathy, especially when dealing with financial difficulties, but that wasn’t shown in this case.

Rubbish company all the way down to the management and staff working at this organisation. Management are quite frankly incompetent and have low iq. They purposely lie and don’t comply with the agreements they state in a contract with their own staff but then want staff to present the highest standards in terms of working performance and punctuality. Overall an awful company and its no surprise to me why they can’t seem to retain staff that long in the business as they are run catastrophically.

They harass you with phone call and text messages even when you have arranged for a call back to set up a payment plan.
Apparently there system will stop all call and text messages once a plan is set up and it can be changed.
This companey just harass you.

Rude staff
Zero empathy
No support at all

Lets be honest, nobody likes a visit from a baliff so all negative reviews seems about right for a debt collection company. However this company really are scum, and the councils who work with them should be investigated.
Their "staff" turn up and face their id badge towards their chest purposfully trying to hide their identity(guy actually made an effort to turn his round when he realised it was facing outwards, it was caught on my doorbell cam, so a blatant attempt at hiding who he was in an obvious attempt to try make me.open the door eithout fear of it being a baliff) they offer no payment plans just demand the money there and then or they will remove goods. Account on hold whilst investigating the wrongful tickets, no warning that they had decided to end this hold, just turn up adding more fees on then lie about it ever having been on hold. Baliffs attempting to hide their faces from home security cameras, but according to marstons this is ok, and is in no way a form of intimidation, yet I bet if someone turned up at their house deliberately trying to hide their face they would feel uneasy.
All this for tickets not even for me but for an ex and 2nd time of telling them he hasnt ever even lived at the address and 2nd time of them promising nobody from marstons would turn up at my address looking for him again, and when I said if they did turn up again I would be contacting the police I was laughed at and told to not be so stupid and waste police time. There are laws in place for baliffs and it seems the ones working for marstons need to be reminded of them

Disgusting and inhumane are the only two words to describe them. Mr ‘Wintersgill’ has absolutely no training in vulnerable people such as those with a mental illness. He gave absolutely no choice to split the payment,despite sending over health records from the last 6 months to Marstons useless ‘Welfare team’ showing I have been physically and mentally unable to work for the last six months that still was not enough for him (up to himself not the welfare team) to agree to a payment plan. I had to get my mam to deal with him on my behalf to help and these are just a few of the words he said
‘Aye well we can all say we are vulnerable can’t we’ ‘If you have worked for the NHS 20 years you would think you would have money saved up’ ‘Yeah I had a read over letters and can see investigations are ongoing so I’m still wanting payment in full’ ‘If she dosent answer the door tomorrow then we will know she has something to hide so we will see what tomorrow brings eh’

It was bullying and I’m absolutely disgusted, in this day in age when you have genuine hard working people who pay their taxes and do what they can to get by and deal with their own problems, share EVIDENCE of this and kindly ask for even the payment to be split in two it’s then a threat to ‘see what happens’, it has honestly left me disgusted.