Danni

beyonceshaker

Hi there I have read a few things on here and new to the forum Im wondering if anybody can help me or give me some advice please?

I received a contractual car parking charge notice for parking my car at Wickes in Boston, Lincs and have been charged 95 pounds! My two friends who joined me for a pizza that night also were charged the same! I am so annoyed and I wrote them a letter to try and challenge this fine! They have sent a letter back saying that I still have to pay it!

After reading what some people have written I wish I had maybe just left it but I have replied now so they know I was driving...any advice on what I can do! Im gonna be gutted if I have to pay that..its such a ridiculous amount!

Thanks

Dublindel

That's G24 I guess. Just ignore them, I have dealt with them and they are so limp wristed.

HardWorker2010_2

Relax!

You and your friends should ignore them.

So what if they now have your name, they still have no right to charge you anything.

Do nothing unless the cars are company vehicles or hired/leased. If so ask for further advice back here.

ManxRed

The landowner, not G24, is entitled to the actual financial losses suffered as a result of your parking.

Which is £0.00.

So, you owe the landowner £0.00.

Relax, it wouldn't last five minutes in court. For that reason G24 won't even try.

Coupon-mad

beyonceshaker wrote: »

Hi there I have read a few things on here and new to the forum Im wondering if anybody can help me or give me some advice please?

I received a contractual car parking charge notice for parking my car at Wickes in Boston, Lincs and have been charged 95 pounds! My two friends who joined me for a pizza that night also were charged the same! I am so annoyed and I wrote them a letter to try and challenge this fine! They have sent a letter back saying that I still have to pay it!

After reading what some people have written I wish I had maybe just left it but I have replied now so they know I was driving...any advice on what I can do! Im gonna be gutted if I have to pay that..its such a ridiculous amount!

Thanks

It is a scam. Ignore it. NOTHING WILL HAPPEN, no CCJ, nothing! It's not a real PCN so please also tell your friends this fact too.

The letters the registered keeper will now receive are no biggie, just file them. They really are like phishing emails and you can see right through them when you know it's all hot air. As long as none of your cars that got the fake 'tickets' are company or hire cars then it's easy for the registered keepers to ignore the letters now they know it's all a well-known con trick.

Oh and show your friends the Watchdog clip linked on another top sticky thread 'PPC letters & threats' which is currently 2nd from the top of the forum list, only one click away - see my signature. The same thread also has preview pictures of each letter so you can just play snap with them rather than actually read their debt collector baloney.

It's not difficult to play 'snap' with some junk mail you can predict and it doesn't matter that you were intially duped into thinking you could 'appeal' (think about it...this is a fake PCN from a scammer so why would there be any appeal?! It's just to get info from you and to make it seem like a real parking ticket).

Enjoy the Summer and just tick off each matching letter against our thread.

HTH

Kite2010

Parked for longer than was "allowed"?

I'm assuming as you mentioned "that night" it was after the shop was closed, so the losses are zero. The chances of the PPC taking you/friends to court is as likely as you flipping a 1p coin 1 million times and each time it landing on it's side.

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. Private parking companies (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.

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 recent landmark court cases, VCS Parking Control vs. Ronald Ibbotson, S!!!!horpe, 2012, HM Revenue & Customs vs. VCS Parking Control, Lower Tax Tribunal, 2012 and VCS Parking Control vs. HM Revenue & Customs (Appeal), Upper Tax Tribunal, 2012. In these cases, the judges ruled that only the CPO can charge for parking and 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 they can now harass the driver instead of harassing the registered keeper.

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 take anyone who didn’t pay them to court.

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 like this by ignoring it. Eventually, they will run out of empty threats and stop throwing good money after bad.

SodG24

G24 are nothing but a bunch of scammers. They break contracts they have with their suppliers such as Nominet yet have the cheek to suggest YOU pay them for "breaking" the imaginary contract you supposedly entered into with them !!!! You couldn't make it up :rotfl:

Ignore them, they go away fairly quickly - I've ignored them twice
( so far ).