APCOA - paying online

thoult

Hi there,

Has anyone had any issues with paying a PCN online to APCOA?

I received a ticket this morning for parking on a single yellow line during restrictions. The ticket is 100% kosher and is in no way disputed by me. The amount is £70, reduced to £35 if paid quickly.

I went to pay it online through APCOA's service. A link is given on the back of your ticket, and the user is asked to enter their PCN number and car registration.

After doing this, I found I was only given the option of either paying £20 or £50. This seems a little asinine to me - as much as I would love to get away with paying £20 for a ticket earned through my own stupidity, I'd rather make sure I paid off the proper amount and be done with it.

Of course, the other methods of payment - by post or by phone - incur some small incidental cost to the payee, so of course I steadfastly refuse to use those!

Has anyone ever had an issue with this before? It seems like a ridiculously poorly designed payment process.

Stroma

Can I ask, are you clinically insane ? Thought not ! So why the hell are you trying to pay a fake parking ticket? Why are you taking this seriously ?

This company like all private parking companies are scammers, they issue fake tickets and mugs give them money they are not entitled to!! This is not a council penalty charge, it's an invoice asking you to give them money, I presume this is on a retail park or private toad somewhere?

The_Slithy_Tove

Is this a Penalty Charge Notice from a Council and being managed by APCOA, or is it a Parking Charge Notice issued for an alleged event on private land? THIS IS IMPORTANT.

The following assumes the latter:

How about the option NOT to pay? If you are paying APCOA, then this is surely a private ticket. Why do you think a private company can extort £70 (or even £35) off you for what? If it's a private car park, yellow lines are just graffiti, and have no legal meaning.

Now, do some research, and discover what a bunck of Charletons the PPCs are.

If you really want to throw your money away for nothing, I can think of far better causes than these oiks.

Coupon-mad

If this is a PARKING Charge Notice then of course you don't pay it, this is not a fine. A real one is a PENALTY Charge Notice (Council only).

When dealing with "tickets" from private parking companies (PPCs) our advice is either:

1) Ignore all communications if you are the registered keeper (other than in the extremely unlikely event that you receive genuine court papers - there were only 49 cases going to court last year out of over one million tickets issued); or

2) In England and Wales only, and if the PPC is a member of the BPA AOS scheme (which APCOA is), appeal to the PPC and then appeal to the independent Parking on Private Land Appeals (POPLA) service - but with forum help!! If the appeal is unsuccessful then ignore subsequent correspondence from the PPC.


The important things are:

- if the vehicle is lease/hire/company car then 2) is the recommended option as you'd be mad to ignore it then see a stupid lease co. panic, pay and then charge you.

- if you decide to ignore please don't panic about the debt recovery letters. File them all in a drawer marked 'scam' like thousand of law-abiding people have done for many years. Only take seriously real sealed Court papers if a PPC tries a small claim (would be a letter from Northampton Central Court - and very defendable of course).

- or, if you decide to challenge the fake PCN, get help here first ON A NEW THREAD with your appeal wording, particularly important before wasting a perfectly good POPLA code which SHOULD mean you can win.

thoult

It's a public highway, with legal signage, issued by APCOA on behalf of the council, as that's who Gloucestershire have subcontracted parking enforcement to.

After firing off an annoyed email and waiting a few days for no response, I tried again and can now pay off my ticket. Seems like I was possibly too quick to try and pay, and they hadn't entered the details on the system yet. But either way, it strikes me as an idiotic payment system.

Half_way

APCOA are a well known private pakring company, however as with your situation they also sub contract out to local authorites and issue real parking tickets.
As with most things like that you can challenge them if you wish, and there are often many ways in wich to win an appeal witha real parking ticket issued by a statory authority on technicalities.


As APCOA are better known in these parts for private parking on private land, then responses such as " Pay them are you insane??" are to be expected, as a result its important to let people know who issued the ticket, and who for.

Parking charge notice abreviated to PCN is a private ticket and totaly different to a Penalty Charge Notice, abreviated to PCN.

A PCN can be ignored/easily dealt with, where as a PCN must be acted upon.