Parking Eye - Parking Charge Notice/Invoice

Vicky1976

Hi

I have received a Parking Charge Notice/Invoice from Parking Eye. I have ignored the first one wanting £70 for parking 42 minutes over the 1 hours and 30 minutes maximum stay as I feel that £70 is far too much money, they have given me the opportunity of reducing it to £40 if I pay sooner. I have received a second letter which I have also ignored which was exactly the same as the first just giving me longer to pay.

Shall I keep ignoring or go through the appeals process? I have a friend who has just ignored but said it was stressful getting the court letters and bailiffs letters through, even though they did eventually go away.

There is the new law that now allows them to prosecute the owner if even they were not driving, you can see my face in the car from the picture that they have taken so it is obvious it was me. Wondered how this new law is being taken and how it could affect the stance of ignoring them?

Thanks for you help from a stressed out me!

dggar

Vicky1976 wrote: »

Hi

I have received a Parking Charge Notice/Invoice from Parking Eye. I have ignored the first one wanting £70 for parking 42 minutes over the 1 hours and 30 minutes maximum stay as I feel that £70 is far too much money, they have given me the opportunity of reducing it to £40 if I pay sooner. I have received a second letter which I have also ignored which was exactly the same as the first just giving me longer to pay.

Shall I keep ignoring or go through the appeals process? I have a friend who has just ignored but said it was stressful getting the court letters and bailiffs letters through, even though they did eventually go away.

There is the new law that now allows them to prosecute the owner if even they were not driving, you can see my face in the car from the picture that they have taken so it is obvious it was me. Wondered how this new law is being taken and how it could affect the stance of ignoring them?

Thanks for you help from a stressed out me!

They Can't Prosecute anyone.

pogofish

Keep-on ignoring it. The PE scam is proceeding as normal.

There no new law allowing them to prosecute anyone - you are completely mistaken there. Also, pictures still have no meaning. Nothing significant has changed.

Any number of recent Parking Eye threads here will go into this in far more detail.

RENEGADE_2

Vicky1976 wrote: »

There is the new law that now allows them to prosecute the owner if even they were not driving, you can see my face in the car from the picture that they have taken so it is obvious it was me. Wondered how this new law is being taken and how it could affect the stance of ignoring them?

Not a chance! Prosecute = press charges > police matter.

They can sue in the county court yes, but they would have a tall order attempting to satisfy the judge that what they seek is merely landowner losses and not an arbitrary penalty, because as it happens, penalising amongst citizens is illegal.

And how are they going to satisfy a competent court that they seek an estimated loss when you have been offered a two-tier settlement? What is the loss? The greater sum? If so, why are they giving you a discount? If it is the lesser of the sums, then they are stuffed in claiming you owe more past a certain date.

But you know as well as I do that they never could have got £70 by you not having done what you did so what you have is a de facto penalty - in other words, a fake and unenforceable invoice, and ParkingEye know this. They simply hope you don't stumble across the facts but it is too late, you've succeeded.

Ignore them. It is going nowhere. The only benefit of writing to them will be to hopefully have the matter dealt by POPLA and this is only because we know it will cost ParkingEye a mandatory £30 and the outcome is not binding for you.

Vicky1976

Thank you for your replies, very useful and has put my mind at rest. I think I will just ignore them. Thanks.

The_Slithy_Tove

Vicky1976 wrote: »

There is the new law that now allows them to prosecute the owner if even they were not driving, you can see my face in the car from the picture that they have taken so it is obvious it was me. Wondered how this new law is being taken and how it could affect the stance of ignoring them?

Prosecute??? :rotfl:You are joking. Prosecution implied a criminal offence, and only the CPS (via the police) can prosecute (except in very, very rare circumstances). Where on earth did you get that idea from?

There is a lot of misinformation around concerning the Protection of Freedoms Act. This is largely pedalled by the private parking companies in an attempt to add some kind of legitimacy to their charges, not helped by sloppy and lazy journalism which regurgitates what the parking companies say without checking if it's true or not.

Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 introduces the concept of Keeper Liability for private parking charges if the registered keeper fails to divulge who the driver was. That is all.

• It does not make parking charges enforceable (or any more enforceable than they were before, which, on the whole is not enforceable at all)

• It does not require the registered keeper to name the driver on request - there is no obligation. If the keeper fails to name the driver, the "liability" (such as it is) reverts to the keeper (see previous point). If the driver and keeper are the same person, then there is no difference anyway.

• It does not set out any kind of statutory framework for parking charges, they are still based on contract law or trespass, and in that respect nothing has changed

• It does not define the wording that must be used to make parking charge notices "legal" or "enforceable". The Act sets out wording and points that must be included in order for the parking company to be able to apply keeper liability, but using all the correct words does not make the notice any more legally enforceable than it was before (see point 1)

And anyway, if your ticket was pre-October this year, it's entirely irrelevat as, like ALL other legislation, it is not backdated.

Keep on ignoring them.

Coupon-mad

Vicky1976 wrote: »

There is the new law that now allows them to prosecute the owner if even they were not driving,

Nope, there really isn't any such new law! :rotfl:

In fact this 'new law' guff has been covered endless times on here; in just a month we've been constantly asked about half a dozen times every day about the new law (Protection of Freedoms Act if you want to search for other threads). It has been discussed to death TBH and you could have just searched the forum - but we always reply because it's important that people know that fake PCNs have not suddenly become magically enforceable!

So here's the same old summary again :


The registered keeper doesn't 'have to' do anything at all. These fake PCNs are as unenforceable as they ever were - it's just that these scam firms are now able to aim their threatogams at the registered keeper if they are not informed who the driver was.

Big deal...the keeper can still make paper aeroplanes out of them as we always did, just as shown by Tim Cary, the expert Solicitor in this Watchdog clip!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAIcdi9niHA


A SUMMARY:

As far as private parking ticket scams are concerned, for a vehicle where you or family are the registered keeper*:

Any fake PCN issued for an incident from 1st October 2012 onwards:

- if you were parked in Scotland or NI = IGNORE IT.

- if your 'ticket' is from a firm who are NOT members of the BPA AOS, or are one of five PPC AOS members currently banned from getting data = IGNORE IT.

- if your 'ticket' is from a 'non-banned by the DVLA!!' AOS member in England/Wales, like Parking Eye, there are 2 choices:

a) IGNORE IT, as ever, playing snap with the threatograms that match our sticky thread 'PPC letter chains' (near the top of this parking forum). This is an easy option and it's not stressful at all!

or

b) Appeal it with help from here in how to word it, and insist on a referral to the POPLA appeals service if it's not cancelled. Costs the PPC £32 plus, costs you nothing, it's not binding on you but it is binding on the PPC. If you do not win your appeal then revert to ignore mode.

This option is for those who want to fight back, cost the PPC money and test the POPLA system whilst also getting their PPC's tactics scrutinised; start by reading threads about POPLA.

Recent posters have had great success where their case is clearly a very unfair ticket (such as disabled/elderly passenger/driver 'overstay' or slight overlap of a white line, etc.) by using email and wording it not as an appeal but a complaint, and copying in the retailer/landowner to that complaint.


HTH






* it is different for hire/lease/company cars as you could find the fake PCN paid for you! Here is a thread about what to do.

Puff67

I too received a parking charge from Parking Eye whilst I have been on holiday. Shopping centre has never been a ticketed one, some 20 stores in situ and on the day in question bought at 3 of them, and looked at several more- birthday/Xmas presents and food shop needed. Point being it seems I "overstayed" the "where did outcome from" 3 hour parking limit by 1 hour! So parking charge of £85! Have never seen any signs before now but i do only go there about twice a year for specific shopping, not to browse! I live out of town so cost of petrol et al comes into play in my planning. All dire warnings in letter as mooted in other posts, but I have taken a company to small claims court in the past and not about to be bullied by these scheisters! Today have written to BBC Daily Watchdog as well on my scenario - livid. If stores are paying these companies to monitor parking, they don't get my business, unless clear and unambiguous signs are posted to state I have free parking up to a point and if beyond allotted time to whom and where I should pay for the excess! question - Is 3 hours allowed for total shopping at 20 stores or for each one??? I moved car within parking area to be near each store! Interesting methinks for an answer on that one! PE - don't mess with me!

grant_uk

Puff67 wrote: »

I too received a parking charge from Parking Eye whilst I have been on holiday. Shopping centre has never been a ticketed one, some 20 stores in situ and on the day in question bought at 3 of them, and looked at several more- birthday/Xmas presents and food shop needed. Point being it seems I "overstayed" the "where did outcome from" 3 hour parking limit by 1 hour! So parking charge of £85! Have never seen any signs before now but i do only go there about twice a year for specific shopping, not to browse! I live out of town so cost of petrol et al comes into play in my planning. All dire warnings in letter as mooted in other posts, but I have taken a company to small claims court in the past and not about to be bullied by these scheisters! Today have written to BBC Daily Watchdog as well on my scenario - livid. If stores are paying these companies to monitor parking, they don't get my business, unless clear and unambiguous signs are posted to state I have free parking up to a point and if beyond allotted time to whom and where I should pay for the excess! question - Is 3 hours allowed for total shopping at 20 stores or for each one??? I moved car within parking area to be near each store! Interesting methinks for an answer on that one! PE - don't mess with me!

Yep - my wife got a nice invoice from Parking Eye after overstaying whilst she puchasing shedloads of holiday clothing from different business on a particular retail park, which is what led me to the Parking board here, where I've been lurking ever since.

We chose to ignore and the letters dried up after only two came through, which was somewhat disappointing.

I'm not sure what small claims grounds you could invoke against Parking Eye if you've not paid out in the first place. It won't hurt to inform retailers that parking companies are seriously p***ing off their customers, but I'm not sure you should expect anything more significant than that.

grant_uk

Vicky1976 wrote: »

Hi
Shall I keep ignoring or go through the appeals process? I have a friend who has just ignored but said it was stressful getting the court letters and bailiffs letters through, even though they did eventually go away.

There is the new law that now allows them to prosecute the owner if even they were not driving, you can see my face in the car from the picture that they have taken so it is obvious it was me. Wondered how this new law is being taken and how it could affect the stance of ignoring them?

Hi Vicky

Just check with your friend. Did he or she actually get letters from bailiffs and court? I suspect that this isn't the case and that they were all from the parking company, plus maybe a solicitor/debt collector working for them - maybe all in the same office. If they just dried up, then it will never have gone anywhere near a court. Bailiffs only get involved *after* a court case, working on behalf of the court (i.e. not the PPC) and then only if you've still refused to pay any fine that's been imposed.

My point being, all of this is really just the parking companies trying to intimidate people into paying up with threats about court action, negative effects on credit ratings etc. They mention debt collectors, but they are not the same as bailiffs and have as much right to seize your belongings as I do.

If you read the letters, there are tell-tale use of the word 'may' when they're trying to paint a picture of the awful things that 'may' happen to you. In reality, their speculative invoices are unenforceable, which is why they concentrate on the scare tactics to intimidate people into paying up because they only ever go to court in the absolute rarest of circumstances.

You've also used the term 'prosecute the owner' as well, which is another misnomer, because no criminal offence has been committed. The worst they can do is try and sue you for loss of earnings - and that's difficult to do if you've overstayed in a free car park.

Don't be taken in by scare tactics. Become familiar with their methods and when reading their threatograms, mentally replace the word 'may' with 'not really likely to' and you'll be on the right track.

Puff67

grant_uk wrote: »

Yep - my wife got a nice invoice from Parking Eye after overstaying whilst she puchasing shedloads of holiday clothing from different business on a particular retail park, which is what led me to the Parking board here, where I've been lurking ever since.

We chose to ignore and the letters dried up after only two came through, which was somewhat disappointing.

I'm not sure what small claims grounds you could invoke against Parking Eye if you've not paid out in the first place. It won't hurt to inform retailers that parking companies are seriously p***ing off their customers, but I'm not sure you should expect anything more significant than that.

Thanks, I will continue to ignore any possible further letters and trust it all disappears.:)