Putting The Boot In To The BPA on Their Turf

trisontana

Orford wrote: »

Excel Parking Services Ltd:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/2012/04/excel_parking.html

This from Excel:-

It should also be noted that we have secured many court judgements in Excel Parking's favour.

And the BPA:-

numerous similar court cases, not reported on by Watchdog, have found in favour of Excel,


It would be good if both these organizations supply a list of all those supposed court successes. I remain very sceptical!

bargepole

peter_the_piper wrote: »

Of these ""with 49 actually appearing in front of a judge in 2011."" I wonder how many succeeded.

As per the answer to my FOI request, the claimants were successful in 24 of the 49 cases.

A number of the losses by defendants can be attributed to poor defences. "I was not the driver" is a risky defence, because the Judge can rule on balance of probabilities that the defendant was driving.

"I didn't see the signs" or "the signs weren't clear" can also be a poor defence (with the notable and honourable exception of Martin Cutts's case), as most Judges won't take the trouble to go to the car park, they will accept the photos supplied by the PPC. And, by using that defence, you are also risking the Judge ruling that you accept the signage creates a valid contract.

peter_the_piper

Be interesting to know how many were walkovers and how many they ACTUALLY won.

trisontana

It's surprising how you can manipulate statistics. Over on CAG, one of the mods (of all people) keeps quoting that 25 out of 49 figure and stating that the PPCs have had a "50% success rate". This conveniently fails to take into account the many thousands of "parking charge notices" which never go near a court.

ManxRed

Or the no-shows / back-downs from issued claims, which is quite high in comparison.

TrickyWicky

Good speach, I love it. I used to work for one of the large PPCs (along with two councils) and I can only say its about time someone stood up to them at one of their self-back-patting BPA parties. I wish I could have been there to see all their sick smirks wiped off their faces.

LincolnshireYokel

trisontana wrote: »

It's surprising how you can manipulate statistics. Over on CAG, one of the mods (of all people) keeps quoting that 25 out of 49 figure and stating that the PPCs have had a "50% success rate". This conveniently fails to take into account the many thousands of "parking charge notices" which never go near a court.

I fell out with the mods on CAG years ago. They seem to deliberately be as awkward as possible and do everything they can to actually hinder people making useful posts.

ManxRed

I posted on there briefly until I realised that the mods had very very strange attitudes, so I quit straight away.

Never been back.

trisontana

I have scored one victory on CAG. They now have the MSE letter chain as a sticky, and I received an apology from them for the snide remarks from one of their mods.

AlexisV

As per the answer to my FOI request, the claimants were successful in 24 of the 49 cases.

Defendants with a decent defence are successful approximately 80% of the time. I would imagine around 16 or 17 of these claims were poorly defended.