What will it take to put them out of business?

trets77

Surely it can only be a matter of time before the companies mentioned in this forum go belly up. :beer:

In the opinion of the people here who what do you think will be the tipping point?

Discuss. :A

Kite2010

When more people don't fall for the scam, sadly there will always be people whom don't know about the scam and will pay up regardless.

It will get to a point where the companies don't apply to the DVLA to get the details, they will wait for people to appeal to give them the details.

Coupon-mad

Yep, it will be word of mouth, the percentage of idiot victims who pay will fall below a certain point in the end.

But before that, I think the £27 plus VAT for the POPLA scheme will knock down a few of the more lightweight PPC skittles.

taffy056

What will it take to put them out of business ?

1.8m people not paying them a penny

LincolnshireYokel

Coupon-mad wrote: »

Yep, it will be word of mouth, the percentage of idiot victims who pay will fall below a certain point in the end.

But before that, I think the £27 plus VAT for the POPLA scheme will knock down a few of the more lightweight PPC skittles.

Yes, itll thin out the small operators, and leave the big sharks such as NPC, VCS, Excel UKCPS, UKPC. And I would expect there profits to take a sharp downturn. Itll make the entire business less attractive to such crooks.

Coupon-mad

Parking Eye are quite a big player as well - I think they were mentioned in a newspaper article as the PPC who were getting the most DVLA data the year before last. Need to 'knock them down a peg' too and I honestly reckon POPLA is the way foward. Surely they can only sustain £27 plus VAT for a large % of wasted fake tickets, for a short time, as it will cancel out a lot of the money they actually convince people to pay?

HO87

I think the tipping point is more likely to be determined by the pain level at which supermarkets and retail outlets cease being silent about their disgruntled customers in the face of ever more zealous enforcement by PTC's anxious to maximise returns from revenue that is being squeezed by VAT and increased use of POPLA.

POPLA could also prove to be an extremely interesting pinch point. Its entire set up is based on a particular level of appeals - and that is what is costed for. If the number of appeals is considerably in excess of that then the system will either keel over or London Councils will have to gear up. There is only one way for the costs to go and that is back to the PTC's. I'm sure they won't relish the prospect of the cost of appeals increasing.

The law of unintended consequences applies, of course, and it may be that what this squeezing of costs will drive isn't an increase in professionalism - that is the BPA's avowed intention - but a greedy price war amongst PTC's. For the first time we may see PTC's invoicing their clients for their service and returning a royalty (for the want of better expression). I suspect that we will also see a burgeoning of new, smaller fly-by-night PTC's scrabbling around in a rapidly maturing market dominated by the big boys.

That is assuming that another judgment like VCS's doesn't turn the business on its head first.

taffy056

I see the PPCs increasing the levels of the invoices to cover the cost of popla, thereby making them even more unenforcible as it doesn't reflect the loss and is a penalty. I also see that appeals will increase hugely as people start to insist on popla. The PPC will either be forced to pay the £27 or drop it if there is no chance of winning. And of course if they do win the advice is to ignore them afterwards.

One thing though, is popla only open to AOS members only ? I mean they are the only ones who will be able to access the dvla records. If anyone starts receiving letters from a PPC not in the AOS demanding payment, surely one of the appeal points would be, how did you get my data ? As debt collectors like roxburghe cannot be involved until after popla could they and their ilk be implicated for breaching dpa, and the same for ranger services?

art_for_arts_sake

I hadn't heard of POPLA until today but anything that makes the PPC's lives difficult can only be a good thing. I'd still encourage anyone getting one of these "fines" to complain bitterly to the supermarkets and businesses allowing the PPCs to monitor their sites until they back down and start using a more reasonable way of controlling parking on their patch.

Stephen_Leak

The publicity about the registered keeper liability and the appeals system could backfire. It should also bring the fact that private parking tickets are still legally unenforceable to the notice of more people.

The first supermarket to say that they are no longer going to use a private ticketing company could score an easy PR victory.

taffy056

Yes it will be a masterstroke I think, I just don't understand the supermarkets stance to be honest, they have employees in the car park doing such things as bringing in trollies etc, it wouldn't be to much to extent that onto parking help as well.

My local Safeway now morrisons had a good system , there was a guy with a barrier you showed a receipt from the shop and you got out for free no receipt and there was a charge of a £1 which was fair. With technology you don't even need that now just a token from the till to open barrier or maybe you input a receipt number to be let out, or there is a charge.