UKPC ticket for leaving car park

eileenfromplaistow

Parked today at a retail park that I have used many times. It is close to shops, so has always been used to park for up to 2 hours free.
Nipped off the site for half an hour, to find a UKPC ticket on my windscreen - "Vehicle owner/driver left site". £100, or £60 for quick payment.
THEN I looked around for signs! At about 8 feet up lamp-posts, but nothing lower to say new regulations. Certainly no warnings as you leave on the path. The staff in Homebase told me that it was nothing to do with them, and that you could still only stay for 2 hours max.
How did UKPC know I wasn't going to shop when I came back? I was as it happens, but needed to sort something first.
Now what is my best course of action, please?:mad:

tom717

Best course of action is to ignore them, they haven't a leg to stand on. You will get letter after letter but do not panic. Read around this forum, there are plenty of threads on private parking tickets that explain things better than I can, but basically they have not fined you as they have no power to do that, all they can do is invite you to pay.

Stroma

So the ukpc employee watched you walk off site and didn't try and mitigate ukpc's losses, what kind of employee is he/she ? Maybe one like this one ?
http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=16231

The way we recommend you deal with this company is one of the following

1) pay them
2) challenge them providing in England or Wales , when they refuse you go and take it popla.org.uk
3) ignore them completely

Don't recommend the first obviously as it defeats the reason for coming here. The second is a good option if you can spend a little time on this. The third is equally as good as this company doesn't do court for the most part.

eileenfromplaistow

That was a good read! Think I will sit tight - is it worth taking a photograph of their signage tomorrow?

Stroma

Well you can if you wish, but we know what they say, they have the same garbage written on them

Coupon-mad

eileenfromplaistow wrote: »

That was a good read! Think I will sit tight - is it worth taking a photograph of their signage tomorrow?

You could take a photo for your 'file' of all this rubbish - and in particular, if you intend to appeal it rather than ignore it. There is now an independent appeals stage in England/Wales for these scam fake PCNs, called POPLA, and most people win who appeal there. But if you take that route (which I do recommend because it costs the PPC money only to see their fake PCN cancelled at their expense!) then please appeal to the PPC first and then come back when you get their silly rejection template letter.

And you could quickly email or phone the local Council Planning Dept just to check up front, whether in fact this car park IS for the use of local shoppers too? It's very common to have that proviso in the Planning Consent for retail parks nowadays, to help local shops as well. But PPCs like to try to pretend otherwise, as happened here:

http://newsfrombrighton.co.uk/brighton-culture/shopping/aldi-fined-for-failing-to-offer-free-parking-in-portslade/

That store is fairly local to a relative of mine and as well as trying to change the parking time allowed (which had been set in stone by the Planning Dept at the outset) the PPC also tried sneaking up some signs saying 'Aldi customers only' (and that was after the store had been fined for the first breach!). The signs lasted about a week before a poster here (not me) reported them to the Council!

Here's some stuff on POPLA appeals:

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

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

and some dirt on UKPC, decide now whether to ignore them from the outset, or to make their life hard by appealing properly & getting it cancelled:

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=77824

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4445855

http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showtopic=63597

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3798967


Happy reading! That's who you've got a fake PCN from right now - easy to beat at POPLA I would suggest (with our help)!

FatAndy

eileenfromplaistow wrote: »

Now what is my best course of action, please?:mad:

Wander aimlessly around Homebase until a member of staff asks if they can help you. Tell that that unfortunately they can't, you were planning to buy a new bathroom suite but you wanted to pay in cash only you couldn't leave the confines of the car park to go to the bank to withdraw the cash without being scammed. So you have no choice but to take your cash to B&Q instead .