Gemini parking

Doghouseman

Hi,
I would be grateful for some advice.
I recently parked in a Harvester carpark to visit a nearby shop. I paid my £1 and bought a ticket but being in a hurry get in the store and use their toilet I failed to notice that my ticket had blown off my dash when I shut the car door.
Returning to my car a few minutes later I had got a parking fine, timed 5 minutes after my ticket purchase. I appealed on their website to be told that all appeals must be dealt with in writing so I must supply my name and address, which I did.
Naively I felt quite confident as I had bought a ticket, provded them with all the details etc and was not trying to avoid payment.
Needless to say,the parking 'solutions' company Gemini, turned down the appeal as I had failed to display the ticket, and gave me 14 days to pay £60, of which I now have 2 days left. Inside a further 14 days it will be £100, which it would be if I appealed to POPLA. Or if I delayed even further the threat of unspecified extra administrative costs.
I have read a couple of threads saying not to pay, but I am a bit worried about where I stand and what to do, don't want it to snowball into a huge charge that I end up having to pay.

Stroma

It won't snowball into huge charges for you ever. You have three choices to deal with this. But first complain like hell to Harvester.

1) pay them
2) appeal through popla, which is not binding on you
3) ignore them

On the first I strongly suggest not to do that, the second is a good possibility for you, it costs the parking company £32 and its not binding on you, which means you can ignore the outcome. The third is the easiest as it takes no effort and you just ignore letters from them.

They can in theory take you to the small claims, but this company never goes there, if they were stupid enough to try you can prove there is no loss as you've paid, and this is in fact a punishment or penalty which is not legal.

Coupon-mad

Doghouseman wrote: »

Hi,
I would be grateful for some advice.
I recently parked in a Harvester carpark to visit a nearby shop. I paid my £1 and bought a ticket but being in a hurry get in the store and use their toilet I failed to notice that my ticket had blown off my dash when I shut the car door.
Returning to my car a few minutes later I had got a parking fine, timed 5 minutes after my ticket purchase. I appealed on their website to be told that all appeals must be dealt with in writing so I must supply my name and address, which I did.
Naively I felt quite confident as I had bought a ticket, provded them with all the details etc and was not trying to avoid payment.
Needless to say,the parking 'solutions' company Gemini, turned down the appeal as I had failed to display the ticket, and gave me 14 days to pay £60, of which I now have 2 days left. Inside a further 14 days it will be £100, which it would be if I appealed to POPLA. Or if I delayed even further the threat of unspecified extra administrative costs.
I have read a couple of threads saying not to pay, but I am a bit worried about where I stand and what to do, don't want it to snowball into a huge charge that I end up having to pay.

This is easy to answer, obviously just use POPLA in order to stop this harassment. Why would you appeal to the scammer then not appeal to the independent stage?

You won't be paying the thing so stop believing their lies, this isn't a real parking ticket and will go NOWHERE! :rotfl:

As this is now at POPLA stage do NOT just send off an appeal without advice to make it stronger - we can help you with that. But you will need to draft your POPLA appeal wording first because you were there, we weren't.

You will need to include more than just 'the ticket flipped over' as your appeal though, read these threads:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4488337

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4263959

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=77301

Here's my usual reply to newbies about fake PCNs, post #14 here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4458671

Spread the word among your friends and family about this scam. Have a read of threads on here and pepipoo and come back with a strong draft appeal for POPLA within your deadline, so we can help to fine-tune it before you submit it. The whole point is to set the PPC up for a fall with lots of accusations of breaches of the BPA CoP and bad signage, no contract with you, demand to see their contract with the owner/occupier, etc. POPLA are obliged to consider it all and as you can see from the first link, cases so far are normally won on forceful appeal points that make the PPC fail to provide evidence against.


HTH

Doghouseman

Hi C-m
Thanks for the reply, I'll take your advice and try the appeal to POPLA.

I'll read all the threads and cobble a draft together and run it past you first. Should I just post it here?

Coupon-mad

Doghouseman wrote: »

Hi C-m
Thanks for the reply, I'll take your advice and try the appeal to POPLA.

I'll read all the threads and cobble a draft together and run it past you first. Should I just post it here?

Yep that's what we recommend as there are several of us here who would like to help you win this and you never know who's going to be online, especially at a holiday weekend time.

Guys_Dad

Doghouseman wrote: »

Hi C-m
Thanks for the reply, I'll take your advice and try the appeal to POPLA.

I'll read all the threads and cobble a draft together and run it past you first. Should I just post it here?

Before you appeal to POPLA, you need a POPLA code.

Has the PPC sent you either a POPLA code, form or any information about your right of appeal to POPLA?

Very important.

Oh, and do you still have the ticket?

Guys_Dad

Doghouseman - check your Private Messages.