Parking eye strikes again

53girlie

Hi, We have recently had Parking eye installed in a retail park in our area, my 73year old mum has received a ticket for being 14minutes over her time. The PCN recieved is for £80, she has written to them to appeal, unsuccesfully. Are we doomed now as she has corresponded with them?? i dont know what to take as the next step.. HELP Please I dont want these daylight robbers to win!

Stephen_Leak

You're not doomed. They are.

Firstly, the legal stuff.

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 the driver in the first place. (The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997.)

Even if there is a contract, all the car park owner (CPO) can claim from the 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. By asking you for more, which is unreasonable, it’s become an unfair contract penalty, which is legally unenforceable. (Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co. Ltd. vs. New Garage & Motor Co. Ltd., House of Lords, 1914.)

Only councils, the police and Transport for London can impose legally enforceable fines or penalties. Private companies can't.

PPCs consider that their signs create a fair and legally binding deemed contract between the car park owner and the driver, that their demands are their losses and not fines or penalties, that these are reasonable, and that they’re legally enforceable.

What do you do?

Don’t appeal. They always reject them. Why should they? What’s in it for them to let anyone off?

What’s in it for them is information. They need to know the identity of the driver of the vehicle involved at the time, because that’s who their contract was with. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to make do with chasing the registered keeper. They sometimes say that they’ve got the right to ask for this information. They can ask, but this doesn’t mean that you’ve got to tell them.

However, even if you’ve appealed and even if you’ve inadvertently confirmed who the driver was, it doesn’t make their actions any less unlawful.

What will happen now?

You are going to receive a series of letters from the PPC, then a debt collector and then a solicitor. The debt collector and solicitor are usually also the PPC, but using different headed paper. These will threaten you with all sorts of financial and legal unpleasantness, to try and intimidate you into paying. But, they can't actually do anything, for the same reason that a blackmailer couldn't take their victim to court if they didn’t pay.

What should you do?

Ignore their empty threats. Eventually, they will run out of things to intimidate you with, and stop throwing good money after bad.

vax2002

All appeals fail.
This is an impersonation of authority scam
First thing is they will charge your mum late payment fees, this is parking eye, they come back, again and again and a again, so unless she has several hundred waiting to be extracted she might be better learning how to ignore them now.
How to deal :
The council will have given her a special bin to put junk mail in.
She gets the letters opens the lid and puts them in this special bin.
Thats it.

Then they pretend to be a debt collector and even a fake solicitors called Graham Whites making fake court threats, they pay call centres to call her telephone.
They will stop if she can battle out the storm.
If not as WARNED above, tell her to budget for £185, she will need it and in order to stop it at that, she will need to IGNORE them eventually.
My advice is to do it now, print her the letter chain from the sticky's at the top, show her the silly letters they send, tell her how many thousands ignores these crooks and there is nothing they can do other than make threats.

give_them_FA

1. Tell your mum you will deal with it for her and to pass all letters to you.
2. Put all the letters in a bottom drawer somewhere and ignore them.
3. When you receive your final letter from the phoney solicitor and they stop writing and go away, report back to Mum that the matter has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

Easy as 1 2 3.......

Kite2010

Might be checking with the local council to see if Parking Pie asked for planning permission to install their cameras as they have a habit of forgetting to apply.

robredz

Yes all good advice, parking Eye would not be best advised to try court and lose on this one, then get a kicking in the press for their bullying and harassment of a pensioner for an unlawful penalty, they have no right to enforce.

53girlie

Thank you for all the brilliant advice! Could I ignore them? Yes probably, will she? As a pensioner no she will panic. I'm going to pass on all the above and will let you know of the outcome. Thanx again.

give_them_FA

Yes ignore them. Treat them with utter contempt as they are contemptible! Come back to us anytime you are in doubt. But take a look in the second thread down (sticky) as it gives you a preview of the garbage they will send. Forewarned is forearmed!

robredz

Tell her that Psrking Eye are just as much scam merchants as that Bogus Official, who knocks on the door, claiming to be from the council; and that their ticket is an invoice, they have suffered no consequential loss to ground a court action, so she is safe, they have nothing to take her to court for. Her pension is better in her purse than their bank imho

booter

I was in exactly the same position as you - and told my Mum that if it ended up in court, I'd pay it. Needless to say, my cash is still in my pocket (and has been for a good few years!). Be prepared for her to have a couple of wobbles, but I found that tearing up a "solicitor's" letter in front of my Mum, whilst stating "Look - this is what you do with these" was quite effective .

And as vax2002 says - read the sticky. It'll show you what junk to you're likely to get through the post.:)

Enterprise_1701C

Just a note on this. My daughter received a Parking Eye invoice. She is highly strung so we did what I always said we would not. We appealed - and they allowed the appeal.

I would say that we ONLY did this because the letters would have come addressed to her and she would have got REALLY wound up by them and she is hell to live with when she is wound up!