Letter From The BPA

taffy056

solbarca wrote: »

I am slightly concerned. I have just received a parking charge notice and, on reading all the available threads understood that this company never took people to court. Could you please clarify this point. I note that you say that "the recent Parking Eye case where they were only awarded the cost of two P&D tickets, plus less than £100 in costs.....:"

Parking eye wanted I think £4k in costs for that case, yes they won and damages was set at £30 plus costs of of about £50 I think, they were trying to intimidate someone, what that proved was the parking company can only claim for losses, those were about £15 each. In a free car park the loss is zero.


Trust us out of circa 2m invoices each year you are talking about 30-40 going to court, and I really mean thirty or forty, you do the maths, it works out that 0.01 % of cases go to the small claims .

give_them_FA

Yes, just to say that maybe you should have started a fresh thread, but here goes. Parking Eye never took anyone to court. However, stung by criticism on this and other forums, they decided to give it a go. They took a chap to court for failing to buy a pay and display ticket on two occasions. He, unfortunately, helped them by admitting he was the driver which otherwise I don't think they could have proved. They claimed several hundred pounds from him for their vastly inflated charges. They brought four (count 'em) solicitors to Court to prosecute the case.

The judge threw out their inflated claims. Instead he awarded them £15, which was the amount that the defendant had admitted he should have paid for the pay and display but didn't. He ruled that the rest of their charges were illegal. Then came Parking Eye's claim for costs of their legal team- around £4,500. The judge told them they could get stuffed and awarded them £90, which was just the costs involved in issuing the summons.

So the Defendant ended up paying less than half of what it would have cost to have paid their parking charges. While Parking Eye ended up £4,400 out of pocket on the deal.

I really don't think they will be trying that again, do you? So ignore everything you get from them, take no notice of the empty threats you will receive in a desperate attempt to swindle money out of you. The only court that Parking Eye are going to want to set foot in from now on is a tennis court.

Any problems post your own thread and we will come back and help you.

Edit:

P.S. Taffy forgot to mention that of those very few cases that go to court, the parking companies lose in the great majority.

So don't pay, use your money instead to buy a lottery ticket, because: