[Watsey]

I accept that bailiffs and repo agents have a job to do, but the approach can be very heavy handed and ill-informed.

Years ago, but at my current house, I heard some noise on the driveway on a Saturday morning. I went outside and found a repo guy fitting brackets to the wheels of my wife's car, ready to lift it with a low-loader using a hydraulic crane.

When I told him to remove the brackets and to get off my property before I called the police he gave me a lecture about the consequences of not paying parking tickets, that the bill was now into four figures, and the car was being seized. When I asked him whose car he thought he was seizing he gave me the name of the previous house owner (the husband, yet he knew that the car he was trying to seize had a female registered owner) who hadn't lived there for at least ten years.

I showed him my driving licence, started taking photos with my phone, and told him that I'd be reporting the attempted theft to the police and checking the car carefully for evidence of any criminal damage.

Great to watch him shut the **** up, very carefully remove his equipment, and disappear.