Excel Parking - ticket blew away. Am I screwed?

shuandrew

Hi all. I recently paid to stay for 24 hours at a car park, and found upon my return a ticket from Excel Parking given for not displaying a ticket. My ticket was not on the dash as I had left it and I couldn't find it in the car, so I can only assume it somehow blew away unnoticed when I opened the door to leave the car initially the ticket machine did not have my reg, so I assume I can't now prove I bought a ticket at all? Should I ignore the notice or is it best I pay up?

Thanks for reading

taffy056

No you are not screwed, just ignore excel they won't take you to court. Technically you owe them the P&D ticket as you can't prove it, but it makes little difference as this is an unlawful penalty in any case.

LincolnshireYokel

Nah, ignore them, its not a parking ticket, its an unenforceable invoice for an illegal contract penalty from a company with no legal authority to issue it and a distinct lack of any legitimate ability to pursue it.

Excel's Offices in South Yorkshire are one of the few parts of England to be designated an 'area of outstanding natural stupidity'

bondy_lad

excel purposely dont make their tickets with adhesive sticky on so that will happen to you,,,it doesnt matter as its FAKE,ignore them and all the nonsense to follow from roxburghe and graham white, all are part of the scam, please read stickies on what letters to expect,nothing can/will happen to you as a result of this, keep your money.only a PENALTY charge notice issued by police/traffic warden is genuine,and must be paid,you dont have this, merely a FAKE one.jobs a good un then.

Stephen_Leak

Firstly, the legal stuff.

Only councils, the police, train operators and Transport for London can impose legally enforceable fines or penalties. A private company or individual can't. A private parking company (PPC) 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.

All the car park owner (CPO) can claim from a driver in damages for any alleged breach of any alleged contract is what they’ve lost as a result. If it’s in a free car park or the driver paid, this is £0.00. Demanding 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.

There are also now two recent landmark court cases, VCS Parking Control vs. Ronald Ibbotson, S!!!!horpe, 2012 and VCS Parking Control vs. HM Revenue & Customs, Upper Tax Tribunal, 2012. In both cases, the judges ruled that only the car park owner can take drivers to court. The Upper Tax Tribunal is a court of record, equivalent to the High Court, and therefore its judgement sets a legal precedent.

What should I do now?

We don’t condone not paying or overstaying in a pay car park. If you owe the CPO the original charge, then you ought to write to the CPO, offering this in “full and final settlement”. In any event, you should write to the CPO, advising them that they are "jointly and severally liable" for the actions of their agents, the PPC, and that any further actions by either of them would be regarded as harassment under the terms of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This ought to make the CPO call off the PPC and, hopefully, realise the potential cost of doing business with a PPC.

Don’t appeal to the PPC. They always reject them. What’s in it for them to let anyone off? Actually, there is something in it for them: information. They need to know the identity of the driver of the vehicle involved at the time, because that’s who the alleged contract was with. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to make do with harassing the registered keeper.

With windscreen notices, an appeal letter will tell them your name and address, and maybe who was driving at the time. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to buy the details of registered keeper from the DVLA. With postal notices, they’ve had to do this already. But they still need to know the identity of the driver.

They sometimes say that they have the right to ask for this information. This doesn’t mean that you have to tell them.

However, even if you’ve written and told them who the driver was, it just means that instead of harassing the registered keeper, they can now harass the driver.

How will they do this 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 blackmailer can't sue anyone who didn’t pay them.

What should I do then?

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

consultant31

LincolnshireYokel wrote: »

Nah, ignore them, its not a parking ticket, its an unenforceable invoice for an illegal contract penalty from a company with no legal authority to issue it and a distinct lack of any legitimate ability to pursue it.

Excel's Offices in South Yorkshire are one of the few parts of England to be designated an 'area of outstanding natural stupidity'

Excel's Offices may well be an area as described, but the rest of Sheffield is great

AlexisV

If you bought a pint of milk in Tesco, could they stop your car on the way out, ask you to produce your receipt and then invoice you £80 if you couldn't find it in your pocket?

trisontana

AlexisV wrote: »

If you bought a pint of milk in Tesco, could they stop your car on the way out, ask you to produce your receipt and then invoice you £80 if you couldn't find it in your pocket?

That's what those "retail loss prevention" companies try to do. They even tried to sue a person with learning difficulties for over a £100 because of the "crime" of opening a 70p packet of balloons. Luckily one of these companies has received a bloody nose in court (over a different case) and the case was thrown out.

shuandrew

Thank you so much for your replies, everyone I was going to pay today, but now i will just completely ignore everything.

Stephen_Leak

The latest addition to the PPC enforcers' tool kit?