Excel Parking Fine, Pac Tawe Swansea

chrisk836

i've tried appealing due to mitigating circumastamces for overstaying in the Parc Tawe car park swansea and they have still stated that the charge stands. I also rang them up trying to get rid of it with no use and reiterating unless i paid by 7th june, the fine will rise from £60 to £100. i told her i could not afford this as a student and all she offered was to make a note on the system of a longer payment plan. is ignorance still the best option or will they chase me?

trisontana

chrisk836 wrote: »

i've tried appealing due to mitigating circumastamces for overstaying in the Parc Tawe car park swansea and they have still stated that the charge stands. I also rang them up trying to get rid of it with no use and reiterating unless i paid by 7th june, the fine will rise from £60 to £100. i told her i could not afford this as a student and all she offered was to make a note on the system of a longer payment plan. is ignorance still the best option or will they chase me?

Please stop taking this bunch of clowns seriously. It is not a fine and they are not the police or the council. They are a tin-pot private company with no more right to demand money off people than you or me.

From now on stop communicating with them and ignore all their letters. For further reassurance, please read some of the other threads on here that deal with private parking "tickets".

chrisk836

so the fact that theyve responded to my individual correspondance twice won't make me subject to court/bailiffs 100% and other people have ignored after an unsuccessful challenge and got off?

trisontana

Of course they won't! Many, many people have ignored this bunch of scammers and nothing has happened. Don't forget that they can only claim for actual losses they have suffered, not some imaginary figure they have plucked out of thin air. In your case that amounts to nothing.

Parking Eye did try court once. Technically they won, but instead of the couple of hundred pounds they were asking for, they were awarded just £15 (the cost of two unpaid P&D tickets) - plus less than a hundred pounds in legal costs. This meant (because they took along four barristers) they were thousands of pounds out of pocket. They won't try that again.

Stephen_Leak

chrisk836 wrote: »

so the fact that theyve responded to my individual correspondance twice won't make me subject to court/bailiffs 100% and other people have ignored after an unsuccessful challenge and got off?

Firstly, the legal stuff.

Only councils, the police, train operators and Transport for London can impose legally enforceable fines or penalties. A private parking company (PPC) or an individual can't. Even PPCs call their tickets “Parking Charge Notices”, not “Penalty Charge Notices”. In law, they’re called “speculative invoices”.

Any warning signs are usually so badly positioned and worded, that they won’t have created a fair and legally binding deemed contract between the car park owner and a driver entering the car park in the first place. See The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997 and Excel Parking Services vs. Cutts, Stockport, 2011, 1SE02759, the Peel Centre case.

All the car park owner (CPO) can claim from a driver in damages for any breach of contract is what they’ve lost as a result. If this is a free car park or they paid, this is £0.00. Asking for more has been judged to be unreasonable and therefore an unfair contract penalty under the terms of The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997, which is not legally enforceable. See Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co. Ltd. vs. New Garage & Motor Co. Ltd., House of Lords, 1914 and countless cases since.

What should I do now?

We don’t condone not paying or overstaying in a pay car park. If you do owe the CPO anything, then you should write to them, offering this in “full and final settlement”. Also advise them that they are "jointly and severally liable" for the actions of their agents, the PPC, and that any further actions have been judged to constitute harassment under the terms of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997. That ought to make the CPO call off the PPC and, hopefully, realise the potential cost of doing business with them.

Even though you’ve written to the PPC and told them who the driver was, it doesn’t make their actions any less unlawful. It just means that instead of harassing the registered keeper, they can now harass the driver.

What will they do to me?

The PPC, then a debt collector and then a solicitor will send you a series of letters. The debt collector and solicitor are usually also the PPC, but using different headed paper. These letters will threaten you with every kind of financial and legal unpleasantness imaginable, to intimidate you into paying.

But, they can't actually do anything, for the same reason that a Nigerian e-mail scammer couldn't sue anyone who didn’t pay them.

This particular PPC did try it once. It didn't go well for them.

Parking Eye vs. Smith, Manchester, 2011, 1XJ81016. The judge ruled that the PPC’s demands were unreasonable, were therefore an unlawful contractual penalty and found in favour of the driver. However, as they were unpaid, he awarded the PPC the parking charges of £15.00, not the £260.00 penalty. He also awarded costs of just £95.00, not their claimed £4,457.20.

They haven't risked repeating this expensive mistake since.

What should I do then?

Continue to ignore everything you get from the PPC and their aliases. It does seem counter-intuitive to deal with something by ignoring it. Eventually, they will run out of empty threats, and stop throwing good money after bad.

notts_phil

Why are you wasting your time with these lot?

Stephen_Leak

notts_phil wrote: »

Why are you wasting your time with these lot?

They posted, asking for help.

I'll get my coat ...

trisontana

I think notts_phil's question was aimed at chrisk836 because they mistakenly believed they could have a civilised dialogue with Parking Eye.

Stephen_Leak

trisontana wrote: »

I think notts_phil's question was aimed at chrisk836 because they mistakenly believed they could have a civilised dialogue with Parking Eye.

I know. Hence my quote from "The Fast Show". It's hot and ice cold wobbleade has been consumed.

bondy_lad

chrisk86,, you are taking this far to seriously(exactly what the clowns hope you will do),,you have been given first class advice,so no need to worry,,so a PARKING charge notice (which you have), is purely a scam, no offence committed,nothing can/will be done as a result of this,, i know alot of us on here have been ,, where you are now,,meaning worrying,( but then we realised the word ,,SCAM,,,was involved),, so, yes its a scam, so why worry,,relax,feet up,chill out from heat, enjoy your week end,,,google,, parking charge notice scam should you require any further reassurance.incidentally there are literally 1000s of us on here who wish they would take us to court,, theyt wont, because, we know, they know,, now YOU DO,,that they will lose , hands down.