Euro car parks PCN

Stevecrf

Hi I'm new to the forum and just need some advice on what to do next. I have today received a letter stating that I have basically over stayed in a free car park by 12 minutes and that there is a parking charge of £70. I was there for this amount of time, but untill I received this letter I did not know there was a four hour time limit. I have used this car park many times before, but on this occasion we stayed in the retail park and decided to a restaurant there and so have gone over the limit. This seems unfair considering that for the whole period of my stay I was in the retail parks shops spending money. What should I do next? I haven't been back to this car park to see if there are signs warning me of the time limit. If there is signs is there a minimum size or frequency? I feel cheated because they can't of been obvious, I would have seen them. If I had known I wouldn't have brought dessert!!
Thanks for any advice in advance

ManxRed

Funnily enough, I've just answered pretty much the same question about the same parking company on a thread just below this one!

Apologies for the cut and paste....!!

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Under contract law, the landowner can pursue the driver for the actual financial losses incurred as a result of a breach of the parking conditions. This raises at least three issues:

1. Euro car parks are not the landowner. Under a recent upper tirbunal ruling (VCS v HMRC) only the landowner or someone with sufficient proprietary rights over the land can pursue someone in relation to a parking charge.

2. They do not know who the driver was. They can contact the DVLA to find out who the Registered Keeper is, but clearly they have no way of knowing if that was the driver or not. And the registered keeper is under no obligation to tell them who was driving.

3. The actual losses incurred as a result of your 'breach' in a free car park is... errrr... zero. Not £70.

It would be laughed out of court. That's why they are extremely unlikely to even try that. Instead they will attempt to scare you into paying by sending scary letters claiming that they may take you to court (with emphasis on the word 'may'. They won't).

Ignore them, do not contact them, and simply file the letters away out of sight out of mind. Eventually they will give up and go away.

Coupon-mad

Bored with Groundhog Day today.

Every single thread we look at is about this fake PCN scam. Read the threads - except for the top two which are a waste of a sticky thread and get in the way of the more important third one:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=163

HTH, going on a more varied forum for a while...:cool:

Stevecrf

Thanks for the quick replys, I will ignore every thing. Steve