Parking eye 'charge'

Kite2010

HO87 wrote: »

The development - in terms of smithy's case is actually nothing of the sort - although I appreciate that this is all very new to you.

In many respects it's an old strategy revisited. In years gone by one of the advised strategies was to write to a PPC on receipt of their demand offering them either a sum that represented the unpaid for element of the time parked or a realistic estimate of their losses as opposed to their fixed sum approach. There is considerable legal merit in doing so but it had the undesired effect of flagging up cases at a very early stage indicating that they were ripe for proceedings and that is exactly what tended to happen. As a consequence the strategy changed to that of silence - ignoring all of the various threats and blandishments rather than sticking your head over the parapet.

By making an offer inevitably your case is going to attract attention whereas by simply keeping your head down you are far more likely to be part of the bulk of cases that, after a while, simply get filed in the "Too difficult" basket.

The "Too difficult" basket, otherwise known as the "people whom know it's a scam" basket. .

If a shop doesn't want people parking outside opening hours they should put up barriers which are closed 30 minutes after the stores are closed. You caused the landowner zero damages (they can't even say customers turned away due to no parking as there won't be any customers).

Just ignoring Parking Pie and their threats

give_them_FA

The only reason Parking Lie were able to take Smithy to court at all was because he admitted he was the driver.

Even then what he paid was FAR less than what he would have paid had he coughed up what they were asking for.

If you communicate you will tell them who the driver was.

Don't. Without that info, they cannot get a court case off the ground. Even assuming they would want to after losing £4,400 on the last one.

Just to be totally safe edit your posts to remove any info as to who was driving.

big_malc

give_them_FA wrote: »

The only reason Parking Lie were able to take Smithy to court at all was because he admitted he was the driver.

Even then what he paid was FAR less than what he would have paid had he coughed up what they were asking for.

If you communicate you will tell them who the driver was.

Don't. Without that info, they cannot get a court case off the ground. Even assuming they would want to after losing £4,400 on the last one.

Just to be totally safe edit your posts to remove any info as to who was driving.

Have I mis-read previously? I thought you eventually have to name the driver?

With regards to this, the letter from Debt Recover Plus Ltd says "The BPA code of practice states that 'the courts do not look favourably on motorists or consumers who try to withhold information from operators when it has been asked for with genuine, reasonable and proper cause'"

I've tried to be as ambiguous as possible in my OP

I have no idea how our car got there :cool:

Coupon-mad

No, you don't have to tell a private company who was driving your car!

That was for them to find out on the day if they thought there was a contract with someone. DRP letters are a load of tosh.

funkycoldribena

"the BPA code of practice":rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Trebor16

big_malc wrote: »

I hear what you're saying - the only niggle I have is that Smithy got stung for the costs because he didn't make the offer to pay what he should have (the two lots of £5 that his car park charged) before it got to court. If I offer £0 now, surely I can't be stung for the costs?

In Smithys case it was a pay and display car park which he didn't pay for. It should be remembered that many believe the judgement in this case, in finding that he should pay the costs of parking plus the other costs, was not correct as Parking Eye made no attempt to ask him for the actual costs and went straight in for their usual penalty.

Many believe he could have appealed on this aspect and won, but he chose not to.

HO87

Please don't confuse an old-fashioned trade protection society with a modern-day regulator. The BPA is very much of the former not the latter and their code of practice has as much legal weight as a one-legged man would in an a*se-kicking competition. Putting it in succinct terms. Unfortunately, the press have allowed a belief to be perpetuated that the BPA has some form of regulatory oversight of PPC's when that is simply not the case. They exist purely and simply to look after the interests of their members.

As for the statement about how the courts view matters, it is entirely correct. What is not made clear is that in the cases that are properly defended the PPC's are amply demonstrated to have no cause of action either because no contract could possibly have been formed, the amount sought in damages is blatantly a contractual penalty or the PPC has sued the wrong party. Courts also take a dim view of those that institute proceedings against people who should not be before the court or attempt to bully defendants into paying extortionate sums but, of course, it doesn't suit the BPA's interests to say that.

The BPA doesn't talk about many things. Threats were frequently made by PPC's that they would use a particular type of court order (known as a Norwich Pharmacal Order after the case in which it was first sought) to force parties to divulge who was driving so they could sue them. These threats built up to a substantial crescendo to a point a little under a year ago. During this time we here consistently argued that such Orders were designed to be used to obtain documentary evidence from innocent third parties. It was clear that the threat of the defendant having to bear the costs was being used as a legal cosh.

Eventually a PPC decided to have a go and took a case before the county court in Melton Mowbray. For some completely inexplicable reason so eager was the PPC to obtain the order that they failed to show up and by default lost their application. Undaunted they applied again and the matter was heard. Their application failed and no PPC has ventured to try it again because - as we had said here - the order was designed to oblige an innocent third party to a case to divulge documents a party needed to prove their case not to force someone to name a driver.

The BPA has spoken about the misleading quoting of parts 31.16 and 31.17 of the Civil Procedure Rules by PPC's and their fellow travellers in the shape of debt collection agencies. The section in question suggests that parties may be ordered to disclose matters and has been used in quite obvious attempts to brow-beat recipients of PPC demands to divulge driver details. What is never quoted alongside the section is the provision that sits at the very start of Part 31 that makes it clear that the the sections do not apply to cases in the small claims court. In response to a complaint the BPA explained that the quotes were including for information purposes.

I think you probably get the idea.

give_them_FA

And if you didn't let me spell it out:

The BPA has NO legal standing. What it says does NOT represent the Law, merely a lot of pseudo-legal garbage designed to fool the public into thinking that its members can actually do something to enforce their meaningless invoices.

It is, as someone on here has quipped, equivalent to the Don having control of the ma-fia.

fil_cad

There all a desparate bunch faggots that are slowly realiasing there funds may be dwindleing!