Parking Eye

knitter18

I received a parking charge from Parking Eye in November which also included dated and timed photos of my car entering and exiting the car park. It is a free car park as long as you shop in the shops around there. I did this then went into town and completely lost track of time, it didn't even enter my head so I was extremely surprised by their letter. I did not see any parking notices but my husband went there and said they were very obvious and I argued that they were above my eye level and didn't notice them. I have not answered any correspondence from them and have now had a letter from Debt Recovery Plus Ltd demanding I pay £150. I am obviously in the wrong according to their evidence and I have no intention of paying. But my guilty conscience is getting to me and I'm wondering if I offer to pay in instalments?
Any advice welcome, thanks.

Coupon-mad

DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT PAYING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S A SCAM!!!!!!!!

You are too late to appeal via POPLA so ignore the whole letter chain, like here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4533151

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4534333

my usual advice here, as you no longer have a POPLA option you are just in 'ignore mode', so tick off the letters as shown in a link I gave there:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/59583477#Comment_59583477

...it will then be Zenith letters then nothing, as you will see.



HTH

knitter18

Many thanks for the help. I have been told to ignore it but at the same time I don't want it to end up in court. I'm going to look at the links you've given now.

fil_cad

You wont go to court, so just ignore and dont worry be happy. :money:

knitter18

I'm reassured now by reading both your comments and the threads pointed out. I will remain oblivious to the letters.

Coupon-mad

Good stuff! Just don't reply to any private messages offering to 'help' just in case it's a PPC scumbag phishing for details. Has been known...

Franhazel88

I had a series of letters from Parking Eye in 2011 when we parked in an Aldi carpark late at night to buy and eat a takeaway while on hol in Newquay. We never even looked for signs as we knew the shop was closed.

The first letter hit us the week after the holidays and my sister (a solicitor) told me to ignore it (despite it's natty black and white policy type border and "official" logos). They sent three in all, progressively more threatening. They seem to have upped their game since by using a Debt Collection agency letter for variation and to unnerve you - as have Smart Parking- the Asda version, which members of this forum have helped me about these last couple of days.

We ignored the letters and they petered out.

Guys_Dad

fil_cad wrote: »

You wont go to court, so just ignore and dont worry be happy. :money:

In fairness to OP, it seems from reliable information on here that Parking Eye are increasing their applications to court since December. Still obviously don't pay, but we need to give up to date advice.

But as c-m says, you are too late for POPLA, so wait it out.

Stroma

Guys_Dad wrote: »

In fairness to OP, it seems from reliable information on here that Parking Eye are increasing their applications to court since December. Still obviously don't pay, but we need to give up to date advice.

But as c-m says, you are too late for POPLA, so wait it out.

No matter how much they increase court cases it won't come near the amount ignored, going by the 540k fake tickets issued each year by them, and the statistics that on average about 30% are not paid, that would mean 160k+ of their invoices are not paid.

So not even 1% of them are going to see a court, the OP of this thread is vague enough for the parking eye employee looking at this thread can't narrow this down sufficiently to target the user. That is why people shouldn't give to much information on the thread .

As for the claims, I believe that parking eye are using the forums to their ends, the more people seeing claims to the court the more they may think I can't have that I'll pay. I don't believe parking eye are making a huge number of claims, up on previous years but still far less than 1% of ignored invoices.

Guys_Dad

Stroma wrote: »

No matter how much they increase court cases it won't come near the amount ignored, going by the 540k fake tickets issued each year by them, and the statistics that on average about 30% are not paid, that would mean 160k+ of their invoices are not paid.

So not even 1% of them are going to see a court, the OP of this thread is vague enough for the parking eye employee looking at this thread can't narrow this down sufficiently to target the user. That is why people shouldn't give to much information on the thread .

As for the claims, I believe that parking eye are using the forums to their ends, the more people seeing claims to the court the more they may think I can't have that I'll pay. I don't believe parking eye are making a huge number of claims, up on previous years but still far less than 1% of ignored invoices.

Some good points here. We need to see better info re claims currently being made which we won't know for some time yet.

But it is quite logical as the word spreads - and it is - that PPC PCNs should be ignored, they will increase the court actions if sufficient people start getting wise and not paying up.

I have no problem with sticking to IGNORE advice in such cases when POPLA is out of the question or inapplicable, just believe that OPs should have best quality information to make their decisions.

nigelbb

About 1.5 million to 2 million civil claims are brought to the county courts each year so the workload & costs would increase enormously if/when all these hundreds of thousand of unpaid parking charges get taken to court.

I wonder how many cases PPCs will have to lose on the usual grounds to before they find themselves banned from the courts as vexatious litigants? Every single claim for an overstay in free parking would be laughed out of court. Even those that they could potentially win for e.g. overstaying in a pay & display they would lose because of their greediness in claiming £100 penalties when the actual loss is a fraction of that.