Parking Fines - help and advice please!!

taffy056

Tell your son to pay legitimate charges for parking via P&D, the landowner is entitled to charge a reasonable fee for this, or park elsewhere. But as mentioned don't pay anything to the scamming parking company with their invoices.

malid

taffy056 wrote: »

Tell your son to pay legitimate charges for parking via P&D, the landowner is entitled to charge a reasonable fee for this, or park elsewhere. But as mentioned don't pay anything to the scamming parking company with their invoices.

We have made it clear to our son that he must pay P & D charges irrespective of what the other students do. I think he's just accepted what everyone has said i.e. don't bother paying it will be ok. This would not have been our advice and as I said, he's been told to make sure he complies with the P & D rules in future.

jonnyd281

I find it shocking that all the posters on here feel that it's ok for someone to park in a pay and display car park, not pay, and there be no penalty or redress for the company concerned.

trisontana

jonnyd281 wrote: »

I find it shocking that all the posters on here feel that it's ok for someone to park in a pay and display car park, not pay, and there be no penalty or redress for the company concerned.

Nobody is saying that. The consensus of opinion is that you should pay the asking fee to park in a private car-park. What we object to is the silly sums demanded by the parking companies if their rules are broken. As private companies they cannot penalises anyone.

jonnyd281

trisontana wrote: »

Nobody is saying that. The consensus of opinion is that you should pay the asking fee to park in a private car-park. What we object to is the silly sums demanded by the parking companies if their rules are broken. As private companies they cannot penalises anyone.

But surely they are allowed to cover thier admin costs, they have to pay for someone to enforce it in the car park, plus tracing the car, sending the (multiple) letters?

I get the reasons behind some of the car parks where it's two hours free and then you get an invoice two weeks later for £70 and there is no chance to pay in the car park, but this was a pay and display.

Trebor16

jonnyd281 wrote: »

But surely they are allowed to cover thier admin costs, they have to pay for someone to enforce it in the car park, plus tracing the car, sending the (multiple) letters?

I get the reasons behind some of the car parks where it's two hours free and then you get an invoice two weeks later for £70 and there is no chance to pay in the car park, but this was a pay and display.

If you look around you will see the PPC's never ask for just their legitimate losses (admin, DVLA charge) but always go straight for a "fine", insisting they have the right to levy such a penalty (which we all know they don't). They would get a better press if they just claimed for their losses, but they are greedy scammers who are doing their best to fleece people with tickets that are as close as possible to council or police issued PCN's.

It is deliberate deception designed to scare people into paying their outrageous and unlawful penalty charges.

trisontana

This was highlighted in a recent court case where Parking Eye claimed hundreds of pounds for two unpaid P&D tickets. All the judge awarded them was £15 (the cost of those two tickets) plus their legal costs -which came to less than a hundred pounds.

Trebor16

trisontana wrote: »

This was highlighted in a recent court case where Parking Eye claimed hundreds of pounds for two unpaid P&D tickets. All the judge awarded them was £15 (the cost of those two tickets) plus their legal costs -which came to less than a hundred pounds.

It is believed by some that there were good grounds for appeal as Parking Eye never made any attempt to claim for their actual losses or offered the person concerned the opportunity to pay their actual losses.

FatAndy

jonnyd281 wrote: »

But surely they are allowed to cover thier admin costs, they have to pay for someone to enforce it in the car park, plus tracing the car, sending the (multiple) letters?

I get the reasons behind some of the car parks where it's two hours free and then you get an invoice two weeks later for £70 and there is no chance to pay in the car park, but this was a pay and display.

I tend to agree with this in a way, I always pay when I use a pay and display and I believe everyone else should pay the correct amount as well. I also agree that anyone who doesn't pay should pay a reasonable amount to cover admin costs. However I can't see how £70 is a reasonable amount, it's quite clearly blatent profiteering. The law allows the landowner to recover a 'reasonable pre-estimate of losses suffered', not a 'reasonable pre-estimate of losses suffered plus an extra fifty quid on top'.

There's a shopping centre near where I live which has a carpark that's free for the first two hours then there's a charge after that. To get into the carpark you pass through a barrier which issues a ticket. To get out of the carpark you take your ticket to a machine to be validated and if you've stayed more than two hours you pay the correct fee. As a result everybody who used the carpark pays the correct fee, no-one can avoid paying and there's no need for a bunch of scammers to threaten motorists for large sums of cash. This system may not be appropriate for all circumtances, it's probably too slow for very busy carparks and would probably cause queues, but where it can be used it's a far more efficient system than anything Parking Lie, et al could offer.

AlexisV

jonnyd281 wrote: »

But surely they are allowed to cover thier admin costs, they have to pay for someone to enforce it in the car park, plus tracing the car, sending the (multiple) letters?

I get the reasons behind some of the car parks where it's two hours free and then you get an invoice two weeks later for £70 and there is no chance to pay in the car park, but this was a pay and display.

Generally, losses incurred pursuing a debt that never existed are not recoverable. Otherwise, I could send phoney invoices to random people in the phone book and then sue each one for the costs incurred by me having to print the bills out and driving to the post office.

Which isn't far off the private parking business model incidentally.