Parking Eye thieves

fr0d0scious

I received an invoice for £60 for half a days parking at an out of town shopping centre. I have receipts for the shopping we did, including the lunch stop. I have no idea how the claimed charge can be justified.

I called one of the shops and they said that their staff had had problems with PE themselves and couldn't do a thing about it!

I did a quick Google and found the regional newspaper had letters complaining of the same treatment.

I'm finding it really odd that a retail park is supporting the penalising of its customers in using these rogues. How date customers want to shop there for more than half a day!

(I'm being deliberately vague with detail as I understand the criminals read these forums.)

Any advice appreciated.

Coupon-mad

If this was in England or Wales only, appeal to Parking Eye and if they don't cancel it, be ready to appeal to POPLA (look at the threads at the top of this forum about POPLA).

PE are known to sometimes cancel a fake PCN like this (it's a scam fake one) if a person shows copies of receipts over £30 or so. Try that first - just a normal 'soft' appeal - and if they reject, then come back here and we can help you with a strongly worded 'legal challenge' so POPLA can cancel it at PE's expense.

Nowt to worry about - but don't DIY with the POPLA appeal if it comes to that stage.

fr0d0scious

Great. Will do. Thank you CP.

fr0d0scious

Wait...

You say this is "a fake PCN like this (it's a scam fake one)"

How do you know/ why do you say that? These should all be regarded as counterfiet, I'd agree. Just want to double check your meaning. Thanks

Umkomaas

fr0d0scious wrote: »

Wait...

You say this is "a fake PCN like this (it's a scam fake one)"

How do you know/ why do you say that? These should all be regarded as counterfiet, I'd agree. Just want to double check your meaning. Thanks

PCN is the accepted acronym for PENALTY Charge Notice. What you've got is a PARKING Charge Notice. Real PCNs can only be issued by the Police and Councils and shouldn't be ignored.

PPCs like to dress their speculative invoices as PCNs and conveniently use the acronym for Parking Charge Notice as an additional element of psychological intimidation of ill-informed members of the public to ensure they cough up.

Stroma

They also use legalise terms to try legitimise their scam, but despite everything these are fake parking tickets, their claims are often illegal penalties, and for the most part it's safe to ignore the parking companies completely.

You have a choice to appeal to parking eye, and if they refuse go to popla. Which is up to you, but the alternative is to ignore in the knowledge that in more than 99% of the time nothing will come from it.

If it was me I would look at it like this, if I have a strong enough case win to win at popla to go for it, but if not why bother putting your head above the parapet ? FYI parking eye has given out 540k fake tickets last year, the statistics say about a third are not paid. They are not going to go after about 160k people

hoohoo

Parking Eye current have form for taking people to court if they go for the ignore route. It may be worth therefore appealing and using POPLA if they ignore your appeal. So far there has been 100% success rate at POPLA when the PPC is asked to show the contract they have with landowners*, so two letters will see parking Eye have to cancel the ticket, and will cost them £27 as well.

*because so far all the PPCs have refused to show the contract

Stroma

I know parking eye appear to be taking ignorers to court, but its still a minute number, they have about as I said 160k unpaid tickets, there is no way that even 1% of them will get to the small claims.

There is no point going to popla if you don't have a strong case to defend it there, relying on them showing the contract or not cannot be relied upon IMO , there must be other factors there as well.

And if parking eye do win a popla appeal it increases the chances of them issuing a claim. I would look at the merits of what happened if it was me and weigh it up and consider ignoring like most of the 160k non payers.

fr0d0scious

Umkomaas wrote: »

PCN is the accepted acronym for PENALTY Charge Notice. What you've got is a PARKING Charge Notice. Real PCNs can only be issued by the Police and Councils and shouldn't be ignored.

PPCs like to dress their speculative invoices as PCNs and conveniently use the acronym for Parking Charge Notice as an additional element of psychological intimidation of ill-informed members of the public to ensure they cough up.

That's very clear now. Thank you.

I'm just drafting the letter. It feels absurd to be even responding.

hoohoo

Stroma wrote: »

I know parking eye appear to be taking ignorers to court, but its still a minute number, they have about as I said 160k unpaid tickets, there is no way that even 1% of them will get to the small claims.

There is no point going to popla if you don't have a strong case to defend it there, relying on them showing the contract or not cannot be relied upon IMO , there must be other factors there as well.

And if parking eye do win a popla appeal it increases the chances of them issuing a claim. I would look at the merits of what happened if it was me and weigh it up and consider ignoring like most of the 160k non payers.

It's a numbers game for them, and they have the option to take to court for six years. If their current tactic of taking 1% to small claims makes them money, there is nothing to stop them ramping that up from 1% to 10% 50% or even 100%.

As I understand the current tactic, they don't actually usually bother going to court; they fold if a good defence is posted. They only continue if there is no defence or a poor defence. Thus they limit their costs and maximise their return.

After this current flurry is over, PEye will surely evaluate their return on this new tactic, and if the profits were good, will surely ramp up and start going after older tickets.

[note: unless they can be stopped as vexatious litigants]

Going to POPLA knocks that all on the head. You don't have to worry for 6 years. You don't have to worry that if you move house they will get a default judgement against you.

Right now we are seeing that 'produce a contract' is a 100% winner at POPLA, but the PPCs are already mobilising against that, so now is the time to get the ticket cancelled while the opportunity is there.

In the end, it's the OPs choice though...

Stroma

But popla will see 2k-3k appeals going by current take up, so there is no way that it will have mass appeal, and there is no way that parking eye will go and issue claims in the numbers you suggest, going on the 10% figure would mean more than 300 claims a week being issued. They would be barred from making claims in such numbers. If barred and they were put on that list their entire scam would fall apart.