Parking Ticket from Shop Car Park

melissakirk

Can anyone help with advice? 30 Dec 2006, I parked in my local FADS car park to purchase some decorating materials. I first needed some cash so walked into the town to my local bank and obtained money. Returned immediately to the car park and shop and found a ticket on my car demanding £80 within 7 days and giving an 090 number to contact for enquiries. The shop refused to help in anyway. It was not a case of taking advantage of free car parking as at the time our local council was offering free car parking on a Saturday in their car parks. Fortunately, I was able to use an e-mail address to lodge my appeal explaining what had happened. Some 3 months later, 4 April 2007, I received a letter giving me 7 days once more to appeal as they did not accept my appeal. I have contacted the stores head office to no avail - even asking for the area manager to contact me. Where can I go from here? Suffice it to say, I have not purchased my decorating materials. Advice needed urgently as time is rapidly passing by!!!

Jamz

I really think that you have no recourse for action as you didn't by from the shop, my other half had a similar thing to this only she had been shopping there and produced a recipt, they accepted this and it was all forgotten

MoneyMiser

A similar thing happened to me. We parked outside the store with every intention of going in and purchasing stuff for decorating our house. We had a DVD to return and needed some cash, both the bank machine and rental store were 100 yards away. We returned to find we had been clamped and needed to pay £70 to get it removed. We were gutted but were told we should have gone in the shop first :mad: :mad:

We appealed and appealed to everyone concerned but no luck, never did get my money back :sad:

frank_potter

melissakirk wrote: »

Can anyone help with advice? 30 Dec 2006, I parked in my local FADS car park to purchase some decorating materials. I first needed some cash so walked into the town to my local bank and obtained money. Returned immediately to the car park and shop and found a ticket on my car demanding £80 within 7 days and giving an 090 number to contact for enquiries. The shop refused to help in anyway. It was not a case of taking advantage of free car parking as at the time our local council was offering free car parking on a Saturday in their car parks. Fortunately, I was able to use an e-mail address to lodge my appeal explaining what had happened. Some 3 months later, 4 April 2007, I received a letter giving me 7 days once more to appeal as they did not accept my appeal. I have contacted the stores head office to no avail - even asking for the area manager to contact me. Where can I go from here? Suffice it to say, I have not purchased my decorating materials. Advice needed urgently as time is rapidly passing by!!!

You can probably avoid paying the above parking charge. I suggest you look on the forum at:

http://www.pepipoo.com/

It contains excellent legal information relating to dealing with private parking companies etc. There are people on the forum who can help you.

crazy_chick_573

i know it's unfair but you did use their car park even though you weren't a paying customer which is against most policies

frank_potter

crazy_chick_573 wrote: »

i know it's unfair but you did use their car park even though you weren't a paying customer which is against most policies

I must assume that crazy_chick_573 thinks that a charge of £80.00 is OK for parking for a short time. (Please remember that this matter appears to concern private land and is therefore a civil matter) - I disagree.

What melissakirk has received in reality is an invoice from a private company. This is not to be confused with the Parking Charge Notices issues by local authorities.

At best the private parking company can only claim damages. Under civil law they can’t make melissakirk pay a "penalty". It is difficult to ascertain what these damages are as the car park owners are unlikely to have suffered a financial loss from what happened. A non customer parking there for a few minutes is unlikely to have cost the car park owners anything like £80.00.

If it was me I would resist them all the way. I would regard paying this as little better than being mugged.