Private Parking Invoice - Advice Please

Toxteth_OGrady

My wife parked in a station car park run by a PPC and, because she didn't have the correct cash to pay for the ticket, she used their automated telephone payment system (RinGo) to pay by credit card. The system uses voice recognition to allow the user to input car make, colour, registration and credit card details, inter-alia. The voice recognition could not correctly detect my wife's pronunciation of the car's registration and so she had to hold for a human operator.

When my wife spoke to the real person she correctly provided her CC details, make and colour of the car and duration of her stay. Unfortunately because she was late for her train and getting stressed she gave an incorrect registration number; she omitted the first letter. On this basis the transaction went through for a 3 day ticket

On her return she had a ticket on the car, presumably because the PPC operative had no record of payment against its correct registration (e.g. AB59 XYZ) because my wife had mistakenly paid for B59 XYZ, albeit with correct make/colour. The ticket was issued the day after she had paid for her 3 day parking.

Unfortunately my wife wrote to the company, admitting in effect that she was the driver of AB56 XYZ, to explain her mistake and get the bill withdrawn.

We have just received a letter back from the PPC, demanding payment, that states they have no record of a RinGo payment on the day they issued the ticket (Doh - of course they wouldn't because the 3 day ticket was bought the day before), and that the "penalty" still stands.

I believe there are three possible courses of action open to me:

1. Ignore the letter, do nothing, wait for a County Court Summons and argue my case there.

2. Pay the bill in full.

3. Reply to their letter pointing out that I have irrefutable proof that I paid on the day, from my CC statement, mobile phone invoice (showing the call to RinGo at the same date/time) and an online RinGo receipt, albeit for registration B59 XYZ and not AB59 XYZ.

Any advice please?

:cool:

TOG

sarahg1969

They've been paid for parking. Ignore them.

You are assuming, of course, that there will be a summons. What makes you think that? If they did issue one, what would they be claiming? They've been paid for the parking. You owe them nothing.

Toxteth_OGrady

Thank you for the advice. The waiting for a summons was rhetorical - I was assuming a worst case scenario.

:cool:

TOG

Orford

Normally, if one was dealing with a company that uses common sense and rational thinking, then you would think option 3 would be the obvious solution.

However, this is a ppc, so the only sensible one is option 1, Then you can produce option 3 evidence, which means, assuming they are stupid enough to issue a claim, taht it will cost them money to receive bu**er all in return.