Not going too well for Parking Eye is it?

johnm40

I have joined this forum today to add my pennyworth about Parking Eye.

While on a visit in June to the UK, in my Spanish Registered car, I parked on 3rd June at the Rheidol Retail Park in Aberystwyth. We returned home to Spain on 12th August to find a 'Notification de Requerimiento de Pago' from Parking Eye alledging they were "by contract and regulated under the private security industry act 2001"
The document was all in excellent Spanish and the registered owner and domicile address had been used. Fine was 90.40euros

A 2nd letter, in Spanish, arrived 18th August this time the fine is 129.31 euros to be paid before 22 September. The company address is Euro Parking Collection plc. in London!

Is this a sinister expansion of Parking Eye's empire? and it appears they can purchase vehicle owner details from the authorities in europe?

So far I have ignored the coms., as per the advice contained in this forum, but it is disconcerting that perhaps bailiffs will be appointed here in Spain to collect the 'fine'......

Ninkumpoop

Been reading about the parking issues on these forums for a while and its quite a hot topic for me to be making my first post on...

However, it seems to me that contrary to the title of this email things are going very well for parking eye. Parking eye must surely be one of the biggest if not the biggest car park operators in the UK. Everywhere I go there seems to be a parking eye car park. There doesn't seem to be anywhere I can park for free for more than 3 hours without incurring a bloody fine.

I'm not sure about all this legal stuff regarding fines/invoices or whatever but I have never incurred one despite using their car parks on an almost daily basis. You see I came up with the perfect system for avoiding this issues. Its call a wrist watch. I bought mine from Amazon (search for Casion F-91W-1YER Men's Resin Digital Watch)

Its only cheap and its got a "chronograph" I think that its called a stop watch to you or I. You can start it and you only have to reach your car by the time it gets to 3 hours. £7.90 it cost and it saves me the cost of a fine each day. An absolute bargain.

Seriously if I wrote to Take a Break magazine I could get £60 if they used the tip and a photo and £30 if they just took the tip. However I don't read Take a Break so if anyone else writes in that's fine you can buy me a pint next time you see me.

Laters.

Coupon-mad

Ninkumpoop, tell us more about the magical device called a 'wrist watch' that can stop you getting a fake fine if your car's wheels are touching a white bay line...

...or if it's busy at Christmas and the queue of cars going in and and waiting to park, then queueing to go out again take an extra 10 minutes even though you were not parked during that time...

...or how your wristwatch helps you to avoid a fake 'fine' when you actually visit the same retail park twice in one day (fully allowed, nothing on signs to say no return) but then the scammers use the first and last photos of your car to cobble together a scam parking charge notice...

...or how you would avoid a fake fine if you used the car to pop to the shops then another driver in your family used it to park there later - oh now really that's a heinous offence isn't it?

...or how you would avoid a fake fine if you were with a disabled person who had to take longer to shop, would you drag them out early?

Why on earth would you even WANT to fall into line with scam Big Brother camera made-up restrictions from a company using a 'protection-racket-style' business practice? A practice that victimises paying customers of your local shops, driving them away from those retail parks? A practice that is in fact sometimes criminal?

OPC were taken to Court for similar practices earlier this year and found guilty - they had to pay a whopping fine - and UKPC are the next to be charged (appearing in Court in about 10 days time at the say-so of Trading Standards in Hull).

Parking Eye are being watched closely by TS in Wales I understand and hopefully will go the same way in Court if the Freedom Bill doesn't finish them off first.

funkycoldribena

Ninkumpoop wrote: »

Been reading about the parking issues on these forums for a while and its quite a hot topic for me to be making my first post on...

However, it seems to me that contrary to the title of this email things are going very well for parking eye. Parking eye must surely be one of the biggest if not the biggest car park operators in the UK. Everywhere I go there seems to be a parking eye car park. There doesn't seem to be anywhere I can park for free for more than 3 hours without incurring a bloody fine.

I'm not sure about all this legal stuff regarding fines/invoices or whatever but I have never incurred one despite using their car parks on an almost daily basis. You see I came up with the perfect system for avoiding this issues. Its call a wrist watch. I bought mine from Amazon (search for Casion F-91W-1YER Men's Resin Digital Watch)

Its only cheap and its got a "chronograph" I think that its called a stop watch to you or I. You can start it and you only have to reach your car by the time it gets to 3 hours. £7.90 it cost and it saves me the cost of a fine each day. An absolute bargain.

Seriously if I wrote to Take a Break magazine I could get £60 if they used the tip and a photo and £30 if they just took the tip. However I don't read Take a Break so if anyone else writes in that's fine you can buy me a pint next time you see me.

Laters.

I've got a better tip which includes money saving as well...


Dont buy a crappy £7.90 watch and dont worry about the invoices they dish out.

Ninkumpoop

Lol, can't remember when I had that career, and most disturbingly sex change. I know my moobs have started to sag a bit with age though but the hair gives me reassurance.

I'm not a psychologist (might be a psycho though, who knows) but
I sense a deep rooted anger amongst people complaining about parking charges , its funny how nobody ever says, "fair enuff guv'nor, I overstayed me welcome now I pay my dues".

When I was at school I used to blame it on somebody else. Didn't work though.

trisontana

Ninkumpoop wrote: »

Lol, can't remember when I had that career, and most disturbingly sex change. I know my moobs have started to sag a bit with age though but the hair gives me reassurance.

I'm not a psychologist (might be a psycho though, who knows) but
I sense a deep rooted anger amongst people complaining about parking charges , its funny how nobody ever says, "fair enuff guv'nor, I overstayed me welcome now I pay my dues".

When I was at school I used to blame it on somebody else. Didn't work though.

So do you think it's right for a private citizen (i.e. a PPC) to penalize an other private citizen (a motorist) for breaking one of their silly rules? we are not talking about a few pounds here but anything up to £100 for overstaying in a car-park (where you might have spent a large sum of money in the adjacent shops) by just a few minutes.

I can answer this for you. One private citizen can not punish another private citizen in this way. That's the law.

bromsgrovebarry

Call us old fashioned if you like but we do not like seeing people being scammed. Its not about avoiding responsibility and our anger is justifiable when we read about the vulnerable being robbed using bully boy tactics. A lot of the time we just like taking the p*** out of PPC scammers and their pathetic debt hounds.

Ninkumpoop

trisontana wrote: »

So do you think it's right for a private citizen (i.e. a PPC) to penalize an other private citizen (a motorist) for breaking one of their silly rules? we are not talking about a few pounds here but anything up to £100 for overstaying in a car-park (where you might have spent a large sum of money in the adjacent shops) by just a few minutes.

I can answer this for you. One private citizen can not punish another private citizen in this way. That's the law.

I can say that I think its unfair for a shop owner who owns and pays business rates on a car park for customers should have one of their spaces taken away by a non-customer resulting in a loss of trade. I don't really give a hoot about the big companies losing a few quid but the small ones could really suffer. However, the same rules should apply to all and everyone should respect the ownership rights of others on their properties and their right to maximise their numbers of potential customers.

Its all about "fairness" as Mr Cameron would say.

bromsgrovebarry

Perhaps you could show a little concern to these small traders who are losing the trade of potential customers who are afraid to use retail parks for fear of getting a mickey mouse fine from PPC bounty hunters.

Sirdan

Ninkumpoop wrote: »

I can say that I think its unfair for a shop owner who owns and pays business rates on a car park for customers should have one of their spaces taken away by a non-customer resulting in a loss of trade. I don't really give a hoot about the big companies losing a few quid but the small ones could really suffer. However, the same rules should apply to all and everyone should respect the ownership rights of others on their properties and their right to maximise their numbers of potential customers.

Its all about "fairness" as Mr Cameron would say.

There is no such fairness in PPC world just money grabbing.

£80 invoice for letting a passenger out whilst stopped at a red light ..how fair is that ?

It not even a breach of the contract ..because the vehicle only stopped because it was required to.

When challenged by BBC Watchdog the company concerned APCOA maintained that the "PCN was correctly issued"

How very fair minded of them ...not !

Also hard to see how a wrist watch would asist anyone receiving such a money grabbing profit driven invoice ...