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Unfair parking fine - help!

I received a letter from APCOA stating that I had spent 37 minutes in a 10 minute zone. This was untrue as I had entered the zone and immediately left (paying £1 at the barrier) to go to the midterm car park and returned to the zone when my friend was ready to be picked up. I then paid a second £1 and left. Neither time did I over stay. They obviously registered my first entry and second exit without acknowledging that I left in between these two times! When I received the letter, I responded explaining the situation, wrongly assuming that would be the end of the matter as they would be able to see the error on the cameras!
They then wrote a second letter still demanding payment as they could not find evidence of my outlined situation!!!
What should I do now? Write another letter? Ignore it? I have the 14 days to pay the reduced fine, but if I do that, it is like admitting I have done something wrong!!!
All help appreciated - thanks!
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Comments

  • taffy056
    taffy056 Posts: 4,895 Forumite
    They are a private parking company, but do work with councils I can see, if there is no council logo on their ticket completely ignore them.
    Excel Parking, MET Parking, Combined Parking Solutions, VP Parking Solutions, ANPR PC Ltd, & Roxburghe Debt Collectors. What do they all have in common?
    They are all or have been suspended from accessing the DVLA database for gross misconduct!
    Do you really need to ask what kind of people run parking companies?
  • AlexisV
    AlexisV Posts: 1,890 Forumite
    Unless it says TMA 2004 on it, ignore.
  • Thanks for you replies - does it matter that I have already written to them once - should I still ignore them now? I feel like I should never have written in the first place.
    There is no council logo or reference etc...
  • taffy056
    taffy056 Posts: 4,895 Forumite
    Doesn't matter if you have written to them previously, just completely ignore them from here on in .
    Excel Parking, MET Parking, Combined Parking Solutions, VP Parking Solutions, ANPR PC Ltd, & Roxburghe Debt Collectors. What do they all have in common?
    They are all or have been suspended from accessing the DVLA database for gross misconduct!
    Do you really need to ask what kind of people run parking companies?
  • Coupon-mad
    Coupon-mad Posts: 139,900 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    louski wrote: »
    Thanks for you replies - does it matter that I have already written to them once - should I still ignore them now? I feel like I should never have written in the first place.
    There is no council logo or reference etc...



    Google 'private parking scam' and look for forum posts on here, pepipoo.com, consumer action group, all of which will tell you that such private parking tickets are unenforceable trash, whether or not you've appealed already.

    Watchdog covered this a couple of months ago, and their legal bod helpfully confirmed just what we tell everyone to do with fake parking tickets(whether they have pretty pictures of your car or not - in their example it was MET parking company using ANPR very similar to your case):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAIcdi9niHA

    :T:rotfl:

    The registered keeper will receive a few debt collector letters telling you to pay, but so what once you know they are just bog roll! Do not panic, do not believe the lies on the letters about Court/CCJs/dire consequences!

    They cannot just 'apply for' a CCJ, that's not how things work at all.


    See examples here of what sort of letters to ignore and be prepared for. Don't bother to actually read their threats when you get the matching threats, instead look at them now so you are ready to laugh when you get the whole predicable set:

    http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....php?t=2214803

    To be proactive, if the scam letters get tiresome you may like to also report the company and their debt collectors for harassment:

    http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/en...=03_harassment

    But don't forget this is NOT a debt, NOT a fine, just a mickey mouse ticket.

    Nothing happens, your credit record is NOT affected, so don't fall for this con. :)

    Be angry about their illegal scary letters, tell your friends never to pay a private parking ticket, even if they have broken the car park's spurious 'rules'.

    But don't pay it! Spread the word. This ticket is a scam and the letters must be ignored.
    PRIVATE 'PCN'? DON'T PAY BUT DON'T IGNORE IT (except N.Ireland).
    CLICK at the top or bottom of this/any page where it says:
    Home»Motoring»Parking Tickets Fines & Parking - read the NEWBIES THREAD
  • Where i live, we have a disabled bay right outside our house as my husband is disabled and on occasions, can barely walk. He had applied for a Blue Badge from the local council, during which time i made the mistake of parking in the disabled bay before the badge had arrived.
    I got a parking ticket on the 20th September for this offence and we subsequently paid it (£50 made payable to the local council). We thought that was the end of it.
    Today i got a letter from the council saying that i hadn't paid and that the £50 has now turned into £100.
    My husband phoned them up to say that we had paid and we have an email from them as a reciept but according to them, this is ANOTHER parking ticket that we apparantly got on the 17th!! And they write to me now, 6 weeks later demanding payment??

    We have no knowledge of a ticket being issued that day and we have only ever recieved and paid just the one ticket.
    My husband pointed out that if we had recieved the ticket on the 17th, we would'nt have just waited for another one to be issued and pay the second one before the 1st! There are no parking restrictions around here other than the disabled bay outside our house.

    We have sent an email to them explaining that we have not recieved any other ticket and we're now waiting for a reply.
    Is there anything else we can do to challenge this?

    Thanks in advance for any advice.

    Ps, sorry for writing my problem as a reply to earlier stuff but i'm new and not sure how to start a thread lol!
  • kwaks
    kwaks Posts: 494 Forumite
    Sally, do you live in Scotland?
  • Hi, no i live in Greater London.
  • Can anyone help?? :(
  • Take your complete posting and go to http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=30
    and see if you can get help there as well.
    I'd rather be an Optimist and be proved wrong than a Pessimist and be proved right.
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